With the Hot Blood series squeaking up into double-digits before going into
retirement, and a slew of other similarly-themed anthologies managing one or
more volumes, you might be excused for feigning a headache at news of yet
another erotic horror anthology. Or at least wondering, after all these
years and smudged pages, what can possibly be left to say about Doing The
Nasty. If nothing else, glut invites backlash, and this particular subgenre
has usually been its own worst enemy, rife with ho-hum yawners that never
venture beyond the puritanical undercurrents of so many f**k-and-die slasher
films, and stories that read as though they were written by authors who donšt get laid very often. Or at least very well.
So pop an aspirin if needed and slip between the covers of Embraces,
whose twenty tales for the most part strive to be about sex, not just
feature it. A subtle difference, perhaps ... but a vital one.
Like their subject, the stories here run the full gamut of the
deeply-felt to the quick 'n' dirty, with some playfulness thrown in along
the way. At the one end we have Steve Rasnic Tem's "Creeps," whose title
serves as both noun and verb, with its narrator's horror of the body
gradually revealed through a detailed, cyclical list of his lovers. Way way
way at the other extreme is Thomas Roche's "Payback's a Bitch," a
turbocharged paean to trash culture, which takes the butch women-in-chains
motif of dozens of drive-in movies and infuses it with an adrenaline
mainline of riot grrrl anarchy.
Other highlights include "Saturnalia," by David Schow (whose
exquisitely barbed way with language could probably render a rewrite of the
phone book into compulsive reading), in which an elderly film goddess, long
retired, puts a male porn star through a series of ever more degrading
scenarios as mere preparation for a final surprise; and Charlee Jacob's
"Torpor," the most viscerally extremist vision here, wherein a man who
survived an unimaginable trauma (think Hannibal Lecter's basement), only to
find himself emotionally and carnally deadened, rediscovers passion in a
sexual sideshow exhibit.
Editor Guran has done a great job of selecting stories with the widest
possible range of viewpoints, styles, and orientations, from the subtle
heartbreak of a marital passion whose frisson is potentially lethal in Nancy Holder's opener "You Give Me Fever," to John Shirley's closer, the
irresistibly-titled "Learn At Home! Your Career In Evil!," which concludes
with an epic phantasmagoria that Salvador Dali would have approved of. And
fans of Robert Devereaux's Santa Steps Out won't want to miss his "On the
Dangers of Simultaneity, Or..." (the title thereby devolves into a series of
transcribed grunts and sighs), a prequel of sorts to that novel, utilizing
the same linguistic gymnastics and imaginative pyrotechnics to chronicle the
brief career of the Orgasm Fairy.
As can be expected with most anthologies, it's doubtful that every
single tale will grab your yah-yah. A couple I found far more tedious than
involving, while Ian Grey's "Matchbox Screamers," after adroitly
establishing the timbre of an unsettling and unhealthy relationship,
ultimately disappoints in the final paragraph with its
I-don't-know-how-to-wrap-this-up-so-I'm-going-to-resort-to-raging-cliche
ending.
But overall, chances are you'll find plenty here you've not seen
before. M. Christian's "Blue Boy" blends horror, science fiction, and
sexual pathology in a way that's quite unique; Poppy Z. Brite's "Homewrecker" finds her in a droll comic mood (more Uncle Edna, please); and
the narrative of Rob Hardin's "Before the White Asylum" is one of the most
authentic depictions of emotional disturbance under tenuous control I've
ever encountered.
Finally, kudos to the publisher for keeping the price down. In this
climate of overpriced small press editions, Embraces commendably provides
plenty of, ummm, well ... bang for the buck. -- Brian Hodge