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Book Review: Petite Mort by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

 

Petite Mort by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

 

Blood Bound Books, Oct. 2022 (Halloween release date)

 

ASIN: BOBB87TLWY

 

Available: Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Petite Mort is a short story collection that reads like a crossbreed of the Hostel movies and a Jenna Jameson film fest, but with more originality and better storytelling.  This will appeal to readers who like healthy doses of gore and raunchiness.  If you can handle that, the stories are worth a read.

 

There are eight stories, six short and two longer ones. A few have been previously published in other collections.  The main selling point: none of the stories have the tired and overused “male psycho kidnaps, rapes, and tortures helpless woman” plot.  There are elements of the supernatural to the majority of the stories, and some of them are WAY off the path of normalcy.  “Santa’s Package”, the longest (and maybe best) story, has a young woman pregnant by either a) Santa Claus, b) alien abduction, or c) she’s just totally nuts.  ‘”Into the Pit” has a demon residing in one of those plastic ball pits kids play in at places like Chuck E. Cheese eateries.  “Cucumbers and Comforters” has a kappa, a somewhat reptilian water deity from Japanese folklore.  Kudos to author Nikki Noir for working the kappa into a story. It’s fun when authors use lesser-known deities from mythologies other than the familiar Greeks as a story backbone.  

 

The rest of the stories are a touch more “normal”, that being a relative term here, but they all are page turners and pack good doses of creativity, along with heavy doses of splat and lewdness.  Certain tumescent organs being chopped off, horror movie themed sex toys, people being literally torn apart through every possible orifice, it’s all here… for a certain reader type.  

 

Two other things worthy of special mention: the story “HorrorGasm”, which does a slick job of creating a wild revenge tale, while managing to poke fun at the dorks who sit around watching online porn all day.  For hilarity, “Santa’s Package” wins, running away with the writing of Santa’s bedroom scene. He’s quite the ‘jolly old elf’!  The author’s turning of Christmas clichés into witty double entendres is side-splittingly funny: you’ll laugh hard enough to turn your own belly into a bowl full of jelly.  

 

Bottom line: this one is good entertainment for certain readers, just don’t take any of it too seriously.  It’s all meant to be fun, over-the-top craziness, and it succeeds well on that score.  However, this is for adults only: don’t let your junior high students near this one.  Recommended for lovers of splat and sleaze.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on October 18, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: Birds in the Black Water by Kodie van Dusen

Birds in the Black Water by Kodie Van Dusen

Big Cheese Books, 2022

 ISBN: 978-1-7782271-0-3

Available: Paperback,  Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Note: contains some spoilers.

Birds in the Black Water by Kodie Van Dusen is a supernatural and psychological thriller. Neviah, a clinical psychologist,  and her younger brother Jaak, are gifted with the ability to inhabit both the real world and the Other Side. The latter is a dangerous, often malevolent, dark version of our world. Neviah and Jaak exist in the interface between the two worlds. Their nightmares, or a troubled person’s touch, can propel them into the Other Side where disturbing memories from their past or the other person’s past emerge. The touch often wounds them. Staying in the Other Side too long can kill them. They aren’t safe even in the real world; koels, resembling giant, black ravens or cuckoos with long tendrils for wings, appear around them, especially when danger is close.

 

 

Neviah’s and Jaak’s gift alienates them from others. Neviah has no close friends and is estranged from her aloof father and deluded mother. Her mother, who was pregnant with Jaak, crashed a truck and horse trailer. Traumatized by the accident, she has become a religious zealot, who dotes on Jaak and is cold to her strange daughter.

 

 

When Jaak succumbs to the Other Side and kills himself. Neviah thinks she could have prevented his death. She decides to become a psychologist and help troubled families. She shares her secrets with her boyfriend Ezra after Jaak’s death. They marry and buy a large farm where Neviah houses and counsels parents and their children. But Ezra is worried when Neviah uses a client’s touch to uncover memories from the Other Side and he sees Neviah’s injuries.

 

 

On a wintry night, a half-frozen, six-year old boy knocks on their cabin door. Gabriel is searching for his mother Martha. Ten years-ago during her psychology apprenticeship, Neviah failed to help a troubled, teenaged Martha escape from her drug-addicted mother and abusive father. Guilt makes Neviah search for Martha, but longing for a child of her own complicates her motives. The threads of the complicated plot come together. Why did Martha abandon her son? Will Neviah’s marriage survive? Will Neviah’s gift and guilt about Jaak’s death destroy her career and even kill her?

 

 

The author, Kodie Van Dusen uses Neviah’s voice to narrate the story. The writing style is straightforward. Van Dusen alternates events in the past and present, but develops the plot clearly. Her description of the Other Side is interesting. Her portrayal of Neviah’s emotions, e.g. her grief and guilt about Jaak’s death is moving.  

 

 

Van Dusen is a clinical psychologist. Her description of the conflict between Neviah’s personal interests and her professional obligations is particularly effective. Her novel is appropriate for and will be enjoyed by teens and adults.

 

Highly recommended

 

Contains: suicide, mild gore

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on October 18, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe by Ambrose Stolliker

 

The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe by Ambrose Stolliker

 

Muddy Paws Press, 2022

 

ISBN: 9788986056906

 

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition (Amazon.com)

 

The basic plot device is one readers have seen before: a preacher who has lost his faith goes on a journey and faces hardships while attempting to regain his spirituality.  Why read this one?  It’s a quick-paced story that keeps the reader engaged, and shows good imagination.  Describing it as “strange” doesn’t do justice to Father Marlowe’s journey: some parts of it are straight off the clouds in Cuckoo Land.  It’s the creativity that pushes the book to success, and it’s got plenty of it.

 

Father Marlowe has good reason for his lack of faith: his brother (also a priest) killed himself, and Marlowe feels somewhat responsible.  As the book explains later, he may have some justification for feeling that way.

 

Father Marlowe goes to talk to a priest who specializes in faithless preachers, and that’s where his journey into strangeness starts.  The only literary equivalent for his odyssey that comes to mind is Alice in Wonderland, although Father Marlowe falls through a floor instead of down a rabbit-hole.  No world of smoking caterpillars and vanishing cats for the Father Marlowe, though: he winds up in the ocean of the Well of Lost Souls and must journey to the Black Fortress That Sees, in the land of A’ch’Ba’Hu.  (everybody got all that?)  His journey for faith, and his brother’s soul, takes him across all types of terrain, through many hardships, and has quite the collection of eclectic characters: some helpful, some not.  Does he succeed?  Maybe, maybe not… you’ll have to read it to find out.

 

This is written well enough that it’s a page-flipper. It’s got good pacing, and makes you feel for the character.  By partway through, you’ll be wondering how much poor Father Marlowe can handle before he throws in the cassock.  He’s a sympathetic enough character to get the readers on his side.

 

But the real star of the story is the journey itself, and what the Land of Lost Souls holds for the intrepid priest.  Flying boats captained by midgets with wings, demons that have full human bodies as feet, and a really weird take on Charon the boatman, among other things.  The journey becomes a little more “normal” (relatively speaking) towards the end, but it’s engrossing enough to keep the reader zipping through it.

 

There’s also a little hook at the end that leaves room for a sequel, and based on this book, most readers would want to continue the Nighttime Journey.   The only area that maybe could have used a bit more bulk were the flashback sections about Father Marlowe and his brother growing up.  There are enough of them to explain the story, but more would have been nice.  They were engrossing parts, and it felt like there was plenty more narrative to be mined in that section.

 

Bottom line, The Nighttime Journey is a well-written book that scores high on the creativity scale.  Most readers should enjoy this one, regardless of their feelings on theology.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on October 13, 2022 by , 1 comment
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