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Post by ohthehorror on Aug 4, 2015 11:20:30 GMT
edited by J. Blackmore Copyright © 2011 by Circlet Press(Kindle edition) Cover Art Copyright © 2011 by Elisa Lazo de Valdez
Contents
Introduction by J. Blackmore Ink by Bernie Mojzes Koenigsberg's Model by Peter Tupper A Reflection of Kindness by Kannan Feng The Artist's Retreat by Annabeth Leong The Dreams in the Laundromat by Elizabeth Reeve Sheik by Angela Caperton The Flower of Innsmouth by Monique Poirier When the Stars Come by Alex Picchetti
Well this was a revelation. I feel like I've just found religion. Four stories in and I'm a changed man, maybe not for the better mind, but anyway... I picked this up on one of my ill-conceived tours of Amazon's Kindle books department a couple of days ago, which is a whole world of mixed blessings usually, not least because it's just too damned easy to click buy and watch the money vanish but also because there's an awful lot of tat lurking in amongst the wonders. This, just in case you missed it, is definitely one of the wonders. I'd not heard of Circlet Press before now but according to their website they specialise in sci-fi and fantasy erotica(but there's a few horrors in there too, not to mention an erotic ghost story anthology as well). This caught my eye in particular because even though I love the whole Cthulhu mythos thing I've never been much struck by Mr Lovecraft's style of writing, and so I thought this might be a more modern method of easing into it gently.
The first story, 'Ink' and the fourth, 'The Artist's Retreat' struck me as quite similar, both being essentially about non-humanoid creatures(old gods??) and their, shall we say, passionate dalliances with their respective human partners. In 'Ink' we meet him/it/them sitting at a bar. He's described from the very outset as an Eldritch Horror with appendages appearing out of his amorphous form as and when needed, so we're left in no doubt as to his nature. As things progress towards the inevitable we come to realise that he's not a horror at all, at least not in the conventional sense, but is in fact simply entering into consensual activities(ahem...) with anyone that can come up with the necessary cash. Our man, 'Harry Levinson' is looking for a missing woman when he's subsequently persuaded to partake of a little Eldritch lovin' himself, and by the very young lady he's come to find. But don't worry, everyone else in the bar gets to slurp the slime off him afterwards too as a kind of gift or act of kindness, it acting as a sort of drug from what I could gather. It differs from 'The Artist's Retreat' only in the sense that the latter is a little more down-to-earth with regard to the actual sex act. And there is a good deal of graphically described sex in these stories, but then it is erotica so I guess that's only to be expected. What I loved about these two was the sense of the alien or the otherworldly that came across very well.
Now this next one, actually the second story in the anthology, ' Koenigsburg's Model' could have been written for the vault. It begins with 'Rick' climbing the stairs in order to get to a old bookshop called 'Galloway's Rarities' where he was told he'd find a box of books that might help with his thesis, which is on ' Post-war American pornography and erotica', which if I'd known was a normal, acceptable subject for a thesis I'd have probably worked much harder at school. Anyway, having been told by an african looking woman that seems to have made herself at home in the shop that Mr Galloway is dead, Rick does his best to persuade her to sell him the sketchbook he finds at the bottom of the box containing what he's sure is genuine sketches by someone called 'Jozef Koenigsberg'. After the inevitable sexiness between them on a lovely old oak desk, she suddenly changes her mind and lends him the book but only after a nice little warning about how ' We have to face the truth, no matter how disturbing it might be, how much it might change us.' Very subtle. It all gets quite surreal at this point and upon leaving the shop he start to see things, strange sights and creatures, tentacles and flying things and other strange lands. Dashing back to the shop he tries to reverse the situation, regretting what it's done to him, but is told he can only go further, all the way in fact, and so off we go again with the sexiness. I could go on but it just gets more and more surreal now but not, I have to say, unnecessarily so. It's all a part of a much larger story, and suffice to say the old god, Shub-Niggurath gets a mention towards the end too. The other story out of the four I've read so far, 'A Reflection of Kindness' struck me as altogether more subtle and wouldn't have been too out of place in just about any horror anthology. It involves a mirror and a switching of people and their reflections and I'm really not going to be able to do it the justice it definitely deserves due my being blown away by the other three. It's probably the better story of the four so far in fact but being less in-your-face it kind of got smothered by the others. You may have noticed I'm having a whale of a time with this one so far. To be continued... |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2015 12:22:11 GMT
This sounds neat! From your wonderful synopsis, Koenigsburg's Model sounds like a very far out variation on Ramsey Campbell's 'kinky Cthulhu' classic, Cold Print (which, if you've not read it, is pretty far out itself).
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Post by andydecker on Aug 4, 2015 19:05:45 GMT
I was tempted, but most of the last batch of Lovecraft themed anthologies were thoroughly mediocre. Always wanted to write them up, but never could muster the energy. And mostly I forgot the content a day after I read them, which didn't help. Still, these sounds not bad.
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Post by ohthehorror on Aug 5, 2015 19:27:32 GMT
...and so onto ' Dreams in the Laundromat' which for all the world reminded me of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Laundromat of the title used to be a house where the walls were filled with the bones of little kids . Lars Olsen, our main man never goes in there but pays others to do his laundry for him. Our main girl, Rachel, does her best to nosey around and find out more about it all, and more importantly about Lars who's hot and fanciable. After meeting up with him that evening he tells her about the time he went into the Laundromat, fell asleep and ended up in another dimension. Suffice to say, upon waking up on the floor of the Laundromat he now discovers he's gained three pairs of tentacles attached to his torso. There's an awful lot of tentacles in this anthology I've noticed, and it's beginning to strike me as being a bit lazy. I mean, erotica->tentacles..., it's all just a bit 'too' easy I think. There is the hint of more to it than that, 17th centurey witches, a creepy cult and so on but it's just something Lars tells Rachel about before suggesting they go off and save the world on Walpurgis Night(well not really, but it might has well have been). Anyway, no surprises to find Lars and Rachel entangled in a tentacular-sex-tacular(sorry!) just prior to this too. ' Sheik' is another one that didn't really do it for me. It's set in a nightclub called the Casbah Club where Alice, and Paul otherwise known as Nyarlothotep the Great(a magician) are to do some kind of show. That's about all I can remember of it since even though I finished it, it kinda just vanished from memory the moment I was done. I do know that I didn't think much of it though. 'The Flower of Innsmouth' does a good job of saving us from grave disappointment as we head towards the end of the anthology. It has that wonderful old fashioned style of writing that I've only recently moaned about in the Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories thread, but here for some reason it really appealed to me. I think it maybe that it's a new story written as though it's from a previous age. Well whatever, it works very well and the writing really stands out as being truly excellent for me. The story is short and once again involves the, at this point, obligatory tentacle sex towards the end, but It was soo well written and soo very atmospheric that it just seemed right and good. Here's a little example of what I mean by atmospheric, And the ending is just classic. I'll attempt(here's hoping) to spoiler it just in case, Very good. Loved the old fashioned style(this time), and that ending really made me smile. The last story in this anthology is 'When the stars come' and is another I quite enjoyed. It's about a father and daughter who are followers of Yog-Sothoth, while the wife/mother is a devout Christian. The Father has a copy of the Necronomicon and is teaching his daughter from it, as well as preparing her for her marriage to the self-same god come All-Hallows when the moon lines up with Neptune. Lavinny decides to clear the way in the meantime by chopping her mother up and feeding her to the pigs, to which her father sighs and replies, 'We'll have to go into mourning'. Never mind then, aye. There are as many stars probing our Lavinny this time as there are tentacles, although they're called tendrils in this case when we do finally get to the final scene. Yog-Sothoth seems like a nice chap too, quite gentle with his tendrils in fact when push comes to shove, and this being erotica I'm speaking quite literally. Yeah, a couple of duds then but on the whole some really good little stories here even given the over-reliance on tentacles. Edit: Upon reflection that's probably not the best example of the atmospheric writing I was talking about but it's there somewhere I swear. |
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