Customer Reviews

Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had heard of Steve Bermans fiction collection, Trysts, at Amazon.com, and it sounded interesting. Matt Bauers striking artwork on the cover caught my interest even more.

As the words he chose for his title and subtitle suggest, Berman can find something obscure or archaic, then turn it into something wondrous and unpredictable.

While Berman will certainly appeal to fans of modern horror writers like Clive Barker, his writing seems more like a reshaped, updated, and gay-themed version of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like those 19th century authors, both of whom helped shape fantastic fiction, Berman can use a few suggestive words, emotions, or images to spawn entire worlds of fear, dread, and awe. But also like those writers, he makes us want to keep exploring the dark forests of the human mind, to see how the experience will affect us.

Of course, in Bermans case, we mostly find modern landscapes, such as run-down apartment buildings that house demons, spiders, ghosts, and seductive hustlers. Or we find familiar situations that many gays can relate to, such as a young gay man who worries that he might not be as attractive as his gay buddy or the men in one of their favorite magazines.

These stories arent always dark. They can be hopeful or erotic, and theyre sometimes even funny, though Berman often adds to the intensity by mixing the fearful with those more positive elements. I loved these thirteen stories by Steve Berman, and I hope he wont stop with the Triskaidecollection that introduced me to his work.

We can now find many writers that bring the gay fiction genre into the sub-genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror. Ive barely started exploring the works of such writers, but I consider Trysts a great place to start!

These are just some great tales which are always exciting, sometimes sad, often thrilling, and always enrapting! He's done a great job putting them together and I'm glad to have this collection in my library!

Disturbing, tantalizing, erotic, chilling. Every story in this collection has something different to offer the reader. From dark erotisism, to heartfelt (albeit bizzare) love triangles, these stories showcase the wide range of subjects the author has at his disposal. Especially good are Mr. Berman's Fallen stories. These shorts draw you in, and leave you hungry for more tales from this topsy-turvy world. This is an excellent first outing by Mr. Berman, and I eagerly await his next work.

Trysts was more like a tease... but in that achingly Good way - it left me longing for more. Steve Berman's writing style is varied and dramatic. Each story stands on its own and speaks with a unique voice and perspective imparting something wonderful, sacred, or profane to the reader. He speaks to our first loves, our crushes, our fantasies, and our darker desires all in a surprisingly small collection. And if there is one bad thing about this collection it is that it is ONLY 13 stories long... At the end of this book I wanted more. Steve Berman is the newest addition to the list of Authors that I will look out for and buy anything that he puts out... well worth purchasing!

13 stories to ponder and reflect. Having read them all in one sitting, I find myself wishing I had paced myself versus sprinting through the varied landscapes Steve Berman creates in Trysts.

The collection begins with Beach 2, a very subtle piece light on fantasy but setting the tone for the personal journeys Steve's engaging characters will travel. As you progress from Tryst to Tryst you experience the wonder, the magic and occasionally the fear that comes along with each. After finishing Trysts, you are left with a satisfying if cluttered set of voices whispering their desires and fears. You can only wonder where many of the stories end, and I hope we'll find out more in a second volume.

I picked up Trysts not knowing what to expect and not having heard of it before. When I discovered it was nominated for two Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, I was hopeful the content and quality would live up to my expectations and was not disappointed. I'll echo other reviewers in that I'm looking forward to the next 13 stories, but I'll be contrary in that the most lasting stories are not those in the Fallen areas, but some of the more cleaver and subtle tales that start you on your adventure.

I have ADD so reading is hard for me. Most books I can't or won't finish. I could not stop reading this book. The writing is brilliant!!

I enjoyed these short stories with their very real and interesting charictors as well as their haunting overtones. Varied, fasinating and gripping I read it from cover to cover without wanting to put it down!
The short story form is a hard one to write in and to write well in its confines harder yet. Mr Berman has a mastery of the form that is rare in an early work by any author!
I would definatly recomend the book!

Well, it's been a little bit since I've read any gay books, so I thought it was time. I had Trysts on the shelf for several months and pulled it down for a closer look. Once I started this book of short stories, I pretty much read them all thru. I like to read short stories and interject them into my novel and non-fiction reading, but these were too interesting, odd and funly strange. I especially liked the last set of stories that are all tied together and take place in small altered pockets of America. A strange event has caused certain areas to Fall, making them into twisted realms filled with magic, monsters and rag tag groups of people looking for something, be it love, drugs, sex, acceptance.

My favorite story in the bunch was Finn's Night, which really didn't have any fantasy to it at all. It is a spin on Huck Finn and takes a gay gambler into youngins and mixes him up with Huck and a lady conartist. Very interesting, funny and romantic in an oldstyle way. Very different from anything else you'll tend to read.

Cries Beneath the Plaster was one of the creepiest. A man turns tricks into a work of art...until the art comes to life. This one was very strange and creepy, but I won't say anymore as to spoil it.

Other stories in this book of 13, take on a prostitute ring that isn't quite what it seems and the john that gets taken into a dark circle. A youth makes a perfect man out of cuttings from magazines and then runs into him...kinda... and then there is the secret desires that only a ghost can reveal thru a Ouija board.

Some I liked better than others, of course, but all had twists on life, love and loneliness; drugs and sex; youth and desires. All had a queer tone or directly queer character and then put them in odd and bizarre situations. I recommend this as good queer reading. Girls, you should like it too as a few stories have lesbian characters as well.

So find Trysts by Steve Berman...and have a freaky night.

I found this book when I happened to meet Steve Berman at DragonCon back in 2002 and during a chat he skillfully talked me into buying it :)

Trysts is a cool little book. Steve has labeled it "a triskaidecollection of queer and weird stories" (yes, that's 13 stories) and I think that description fits pretty well.

Some of the stories reminded me of Twilight Zone plotlines gone horribly, horribly wrong (and that's saying something!), while others were almost traditional horror stories like I grew up reading in those big Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. Sure, they were "queer and weird" (and I don't think Twilight Zone would have gay men and lust in the middle of most stories) but Steve certainly has a handle on the basics of horror!

One of the main themes, maybe even the theme of the story collection seems to be that of a character or a group of them stepping away from normal life (either willingly or by accident) and getting sucked into situations or whole worlds which are just scary -- painful, corrupt, wrong, immoral, or just not part of the normal world, instead belonging to a dark side of life, from which the characters can't escape.

One story, "Cries Beneath the Plaster," has an artist seeing his own creations (and past misdeeds) coming after him in revenge. Several of the stories take place in a nameless city where large sections have somehow changed, so they are now "Fallen" areas where people live in madness, magic, corruption, and are just generally no longer living the safe, happy lives they were before.

My favorite story in the book is "Path of Corruption." Reminding very much of Storm Constantine's stories, "Path" tells the story of a young gay college student in New Orleans who step by step abandons his safety and propriety to join up with a male prostitute. And it's not just that he ends up basically living in a whorehouse, but that the man he's with, the men in the house, aren't just ordinary whores but more like a cult. The story ends with a shattering scene of whores carrying out a ritual half-way between an H.P. Lovecraft story and something in Storm's Grigori series!

This is a great short story collection and one I'd strongly recommend to people looking for horror and dark fantasy with some queer content and/or sex mixed in. Go out and hook up with Trysts!

Amazon insists on a maximum of 1,000 words. While it would be easy for me to go over the strengths and weaknesses of this collection in detail, I prefer short and sweet. Concision over verbiage. Therefore, I'll try for under 500 words just to be safe. Anyway, this is a very good first collection from a writer we need to see more from. The anthologies that I've encountered which could probably be lumped into the same category as this book have been disappointing; the editors always seem anxious to publish those who should not be allowed to get near a keyboard....ever. So it was a relief to come across this book which shows that there is talent out there. This collection is a stand-out. The best ones are historical fantasies which seem to be Steve Berman's strength: "Finn's Night" presents an adventure of Huck that you probably didn't hear about from your English teachers in school and "The Resurrectionist" is, to further wear out a worn out term, a gem. In "His Paper Doll" we have a sweet gay boy meets gay boy (with the help of a voodoo doll made of the cut up pictures from magazines) story. "Path of Corruption" is a great piece of gay horror fiction. While the stories that round out this collection still work well separately, you can't help but be teased with the idea that they could be just parts of much larger piece such as a novel.