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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
These six vampire novellas are quite anemic,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Vampire Sextette (Paperback)
In his introduction to this collection of six original erotic vampire novellas, editor Marvin Kaye insists that he has included stories of "the traditional bloodsucking variety." If that is his intent, I have to say he failed rather miserably. You will find no vampires in this collection that resemble the traditional image of the breed. In a couple of cases, vampirism seems to be an after-thought having no real connection to the story being told. There is a fair share of eroticism in these pages, but as often as not it strikes me as gratuitous and thus ineffective. Kim Newman's The Other Side of Midnight is, frankly, a mess. There is hardly any plot at all to it. Genevieve is an elder vampire going on six hundred years old, currently working as a private detective in California. Someone is obsessed with remaking Dracula movies, including the great Orson Welles. Welles hires Gene to find out about the man financing his project, a horrible remake of the Dracula story that was supposed to be Welles' big comeback movie. In the midst of a plethora of Hollywood name-dropping, we also have Barbie the Vampire Slayer who is following the designs of the Overlooker (who happens to be a high school librarian). Somehow all of these people are related, but the whole story is a ridiculous farce subsisting solely on nonsense. Nancy Collins' Some Velvet Morning features Sonja Blue, the vampire/vampire slayer who has walked the pages of much of the author's fiction. Sporting a black leather motorcycle jacket and mirrored sunglasses, she is the Blue Monster who badly wounded the Contessa years earlier and is determined to finish her off once and for all. The Contessa is not a typical vampire; rather, she is a strega, one who has transformed herself into an Undead creature through black magic. Rather than drink the blood of her victims, she washes in their blood in order to retain your youth and vitality. She has her own private renfield named Phaedra who seduces men and brings them home to supply her mistress' needs. I really enjoyed this story once I got past the overtly sexual descriptions early on. Although Sonja is not heavily featured in the story as a whole-it is really the Contessa's story-she comes across as a most unusual "hero." We know she is a vampire, and we know her transformation was not a wanted one, but we are given few clues about her history and motivations. The prolific Brian Stableford contributes the tale "Sheena" about a young Goth rock singer/songwriter. The protagonist Tony Weever meets Sheena at work and becomes intrigued with her slight, deeply mysterious presence. Sheena introduces Tony to a Gothic-dominated world built on memories of past lives, weaving a spell of sorts over him that leads him to thirst for the type of life in which the two of them can be truly together. The story reads pretty well throughout but peters out into a slightly esoteric conclusion involving uncommon shades of vampirism. S. P. Somtow's Vanilla Blood is just puerile nonsense, pornography disguised as vampiric fiction. It consists almost exclusively of the transcript of a ridiculous murder case. A young man killed his family and went on a murder spree, and the trial details the events leading up to his crime. The witnesses are teenagers who describe disgusting vampiric activities in graphic terms that would never be permitted in any courthouse in the country, much of which has little to do with the facts of the purported murder case. This courtroom farce is inane and not at all worth reading. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's In the Face of Death seems to have a lot of potential early on but slowly fizzles as the story progresses. This is basically a tale of an affair between William T. Sherman's and a high-society vampire in 1855. My intense dislike of Sherman admittedly affected my capacity for embracing the story; I had no desire to picture the man naked and engaging in passions of the flesh, I can assure you. To the story's detriment, it never rises above the prurient level of Sherman's adulterous liaisons with Madelaine, a youthful vampire already well over a century old. Sherman comes off as a weak, pathetic fool unable to control his passion for Madelaine despite his responsibilities to a wife and children of his own. As far as the vampirism aspect of the tale is concerned, it is quite remote. We hear of Madelaine's chests of native soil and her lining of her shoes with it so as to walk in the light of day, and that's about it. The only moments involving lips and necks coming together involve kissing and nothing more. I just don't think there is much to this particular story; the inclusion of a famous man of history in its pages serves no other purpose than to make the work stand out among other genre pieces. I would not even call this horror; it is basically a romance. The concluding piece is the unusual vampire tale The Isle is Full of Noises by Tanith Lee. It does live up to its billing as a vampire story unlike any I've read before, but the story didn't work for me at all. Lee intimately links a vampire with a piano, and no amount of literary preening makes the connection an effective one. The story also contains a story within a story, sometimes making things confusing. The premise sounds good; the protagonist works out her frustrations of an unrequited love by writing the man into her works of fiction, punishing him in the only fashion she knows how. Quickly, though, the story gets bogged down in two competing storylines (one of them a story within a story) of converging vampiric pianos. The whole thing is just too murky to be effective.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
the good and the bad,
This review is from: Vampire Sextette (Hardcover)
Well, this book has its good and bad points, and since there are stories I'd like to praise immensely, let's get the bad out of the way first. The bad apple that nearly spoils the whole bunch, and my sole reason for giving this book three stars is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's revoltingly sentimental, cheesy "In the Face of Death." I laughed out loud quite a few times reading this tripe, and not because there is any humor involved, but because of the huge cheese factor. Okay, on to the good stuff. The higlights of this collection are S.P. Somtow's "Vanilla Blood," and the always impressive Tanith Lee's "The Isle is Full of Noises." "Vanilla Blood" is the tale of a high school kid who was driven to form a murderous sexual cult, apparently under the influence of a group of vampires. The story is told in quite an unusual fashion, taking place entirely at a murder trial, and told in the form of witnesses' statements. There are some very humorous elements to it as well (at least, I found them humorous).The overall effect is quite unique, and this story stayed in my mind for a long time. "The Isle is Full of Noises" is a story of a vampire of a VERY unusual sort, and a woman's peculiar fixation on it. It may be a bit hard to read at first, but stick with it, it is well worth the effort. The other stories are not as great as these two, but are not bad by any means. "Sheena" by Brian Stableford, is a very touching love story. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it really has no horrific elements. Anyone who has ever loved and lost will find much to relate to in this one. Nancy A. Collins's contribution to the collection, "Some Velvet Morning", is a Sonja Blue story, so fans of the series will undoubtedly love it. Kim Newman's "The Other Side of Midnight" is set in his "Anno Dracula" world and features Orson Welles as one of the main characters! You can't go wrong with a setup like that! All in all, this collection is worth buying, just avoid that ridiculous waste of paper whose title I am loathe to mention again.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
2 Stars is being very Generous...Where did the vamps go?,
By
This review is from: Vampire Sextette (Paperback)
Unbelieveable plots and very little vampirism in this collection of wanna-be vamp tales.I am a huge fan of vampire stories and thought by the little monologue from the book's editor Marvin Kaye that he would deliver us some real horror and scare factor here, but all I found was contrived and boring stories that had little to do with vampires at times and some downright off the path altogether, i.e., the third tale titled 'Sheena'. Some even read more like porno rather than horror, i.e., 'Vanilla Blood'. The only tale that came marginally close to vampires and horror was 'Some Velvet Morning', a tale about a slayer on the trail of a witch who bathes in blood; or in other words, Elizabeth Bathory, legendary witch/vampire from 1500's England. Six stories in all and none came close to scaring me or being 'what horror is all about' according to the promise from the editor. If this is his idea of horror and that vamps are bad guys and horrifying, than he needs to brush up on some new stories, because I can recall a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes that were more scary than this entire book. The two star rating? Is for 'Some Velvet Morning', the only tale I would consider worth the read and that's being generous... do yourself a favor, skip this one. Tracy Talley~@
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