Customer Reviews

Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love

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The title is something of a misnomer: while the stories do center around the ghosts and love theme, not one of them could be considered 'erotica'. There are some good stories though (some of them previously unpublished) -- LeGuin's "Unchosen Love"; Mary Rosenblum's "The Gardener"; Pat Cadigan's "She's Not There"; Maureen F. McHugh's funny and touching "In The Air"; and Michael Stanwick's "North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy", about a train ride to hell.

_Killing Me Softly_ edited by Gardner Dozois is a collection of short stories about love after death. Most of these stories are quite good - the adult equivalent of ghost stories with an erotic bent.

The authors represent a good cross-section of the fantasy, science fiction, and alternative fiction genres, and the collection sports some well-known names. Recommended for those who believe in the power of love after death and enjoy a good ghost story.

Killing Me Softly:Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love was the best book I have ever read. The author captured what true Love,Hate,Death and Life mean to people in every word that was written. This book captured my heart like no other in the world. It is truly a classic book of love stories.

This book was mostly a disappointment. The title says "Killing me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love" and the back cover talks about Love after Death. This book BARELY had anything to do with love after death or love that lives BEYOND death. I bought it because I was looking for something unique, something different from all the vampire tales out there, but I ended up getting let down.

Out of the 14 stories , only 3 were good. However, THOSE 3 were VERY good and VERY unusual! One story "2 Headed Man" is about a human woman who has sex with a handsome man and and his "worm twin" - however there is nothing "dead" in this story, just truly unusual. I still enjoyed it because I wanted to cringe but keep on reading at the same time! lol In another story "The Joy of Hats" a man has sex with many times a ghost, but he can only do so while wearing a different heat each time. This one was ALSO very unusual and actually DID have a dead soul in love with a human one. The final good one, is not surprisingly, a vampire story "Nunc Dimittis". This was was a little different and for that I give them credit. It was a REALLY erotic love after death - what really, this whole book should have been about.

There was one mediocre story - "The Gardner" about a gardener who falls in love with a human but he doesn't realize he's dead. The rest were just senseless. "In the Air" was sweet ghost story, but nothing "erotic" about it, not even "romantic." Some were long or confusing "She's not there" (read its twice and still had no idea what happened), and had nothing to go with death "Hard Drive" or erotic subjects "Chihuahua Flats". Some were scifi "sedoretu", some were about a love between a son and his mother (which was not erotic at all), A story like the Jaguar had a very confusing ending, and you really rub your brain trying to figure out what really happens. "The Fire When it comes" (nice story on it's own but doesn't belong in this collection) and "North of Diddy-Wa-Diddy" were just tooo long. Short stories shouldn't be that frustrating.

Overall, this collection is not at all what it set out to be. Many of the stories were not "daring" or "erotic" or "dead" as the cover and description claimed this book to be. The editors should have done a better job selecting stories. If they had just called it "unusual love" then fine.. but I was tricked. If they had more stories like "the 2 Headed Man" and put together a collection called "Freaky Love", I'd read it.