Customer Reviews

Little Deaths

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While many people know Ellen Datlow for her Fairy Tale series and her Years Best Fantasy and Horror collections, few people seem to have stumbled across Little Deaths, a true gem of an anthology. With a dark erotic tone, and gifted writers, this book will have you screaming and panting for more.

A complete list of the stories is
· The Lady of Situations by Stephen Dedmen
· Hungry Skin by Lucy Taylor
· Becky Lives by Harry Crews
· The Swing by Nicholas Royle
· Lover Doll by Wayne Allen Sallee
· The Careful Geometry of Love by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg
· The Pain Barrier by Joel Lane
· Menage a Trois by Richard Christian Matheson
· On Amen's Shore by Clive Barker
· Fever Blisters by Joyce Carol Oates
· An Outside Interest by Ruth Rendell
· And Salome Danced by Kelley Eskridge
· That Old School Tie by Jack Womack
· Ice Palace by Douglas Clegg
· Serial monogamist by Pat Cadigan
· Dying in Bangkok by Dan Simmons

The stories are well written and move quickly. There is a wide range of sex portrayed, so there is something for everyone, no matter what you're into. This would be the perfect book for fans of the Hot Blood series, or Anne Rice fans.

Ellen Datlow has been one of the most consistently reliable editors of fantastic fiction anthologies for a long time now, both on her own projects and in her many collaborations with Terri Windling. This particular book is an assortment of stories dealing with sex and horror.

In "Hungry Skin" by Lucy Taylor, a young woman finds there is more than meets the eye in her late, estranged father's erotic artworks, and eventually finds herself in them as well. A man desiring revenge on his ex-wife finds an opportunity in the form of a young prostitute with a familiar face in Harry Crews' deliciously cruel "Becky Lives." Love and devotion among freaks is examined in Wayne Allan Sallee's "Lover Doll." Dan Simmons takes us to frightening foreign lands in the chilling "Dying in Bangkok." A traveling student learns the power of memory in Stephen Dedman's "The Lady of Situations." And Clive Barker revisits a world from his novel 'The Great and Secret Show' as two rogues are enlisted to rescue a man from the dream-sea, in the very funny "On Amen's Shore." (One need not have read the novel to understand or enjoy this story.)

There are also memorable pieces from Pat Cadigan (another very funny story), Jack Womack, Nicholas Royle and Kathe Koja.

Only a few are a bit weak. Richard Christian Matheson's entry, like most short-shorts, is unsatisfying, while Joyce Carol Oates' and Joel Lane's are relatively pointless exercises.

Overall, a good variety of styles and content is represented here - subtle or explicit, from earthy suspense to happenings of a more surreal nature. There's probably something here for everyone. This is an exceptional collection worth looking for.

Little Deaths gets its title from a French term for orgasm, le petit mort. But this collection of erotic horror misses the mark. Not only is the eroticism missing from many of the stories but the connection between sex and death, the supposed purpose of the collection, is sadly lacking from almost all of the tales. In many stories the two, if the exist, are completely unrelated, i.e. on character has sex and another kills someone ten scenes later.

The final story by Dan Simmons is probably the best at sticking to the ideal theme of the book. It is not that the other stories are bad. No, many are really quite good and would have shone in an unthemed collection. It is just that I cannot see why the editor chose them for this particular collection. The opening story is supposedly the keystone and the first story chosen but it is lacking in death and pretty much devoid of horror. The characters are interesting as is the revelation but it just does not fit the bill.

My advice is go ahead and read the collection, just skip the introduction so you won't be expecting something different. Then just enjoy the stories for what they are and don't worry about what they are not.

While many people know Ellen Datlow for her Fairy Tale series and her Years Best Fantasy and Horror collections, few people seem to have stumbled across Little Deaths, a true gem of an anthology. With a dark erotic tone, and gifted writers, this book will have you screaming and panting for more.

A complete list of the stories is
· The Lady of Situations by Stephen Dedmen
· Hungry Skin by Lucy Taylor
· Becky Lives by Harry Crews
· The Swing by Nicholas Royle
· Lover Doll by Wayne Allen Sallee
· The Careful Geometry of Love by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg
· The Pain Barrier by Joel Lane
· Menage a Trois by Richard Christian Matheson
· On Amen's Shore by Clive Barker
· Fever Blisters by Joyce Carol Oates
· An Outside Interest by Ruth Rendell
· And Salome Danced by Kelley Eskridge
· That Old School Tie by Jack Womack
· Ice Palace by Douglas Clegg
· Serial monogamist by Pat Cadigan
· Dying in Bangkok by Dan Simmons

The stories are well written and move quickly. There is a wide range of sex portrayed, so there is something for everyone, no matter what you're into. This would be the perfect book for fans of the Hot Blood series, or Anne Rice fans.

While I have liked other anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow, I really had no reaction to this except the overall feeling that I'm not impressed. In part I got the book becasue I'd heard so much about erotic horror--but still wasn't quite sure what EXACTLY erotic horror is when I was done. Well, from a lot of stories in this book, erotic horror is men meeting dangerous women (or men), having sex (or bondage or something similar) with them, and then dying. Not exactly earth-shaking. This is not to say that I don't get the connection between sex and death and horror--because I do--but I don't feel this anthology states it in a way I like. So maybe someone else would like it. One story that stood out was Harry Crews' really nasty "Becky Lives"; a story that I didn't find erotic but did leave questions open... In Lucy Taylor's story a woman had sex with stone statues carved by her late father and THEN died. But while I can't say the anthology was BAD, I can't say it was all that good either. In the end, it just left me with no impression at all.

I fount this anthology to be average. I was particularly taken with the story "Becky Lives", which makes this worth the price of admission. Some of the other stories are interesting, some aren't. Like I said, rather average.

a very erotic read, I vividly remember when the lady was intertwining her body into the statue. I pictured her as a beautiful bunette with a slender body.