Lucy Taylor (1) (1951–)

TW: Rape, Incest, Graphic Violence

Stuck in a waiting room for 3 hours, read this in a single sitting. I'm fine with dirty books and erotica. Hell, in the age where romances between women and fish win Oscars and BDSM movies are annual events, vampire erotica is practically blase nowadays. My point is, my issue with the book isn't the premise. Its how poorly its done.

There is no plot to this. There is no characterization. There's hardly any description of events that take place. "Well, this show more is erotica," you say, "Porn ain't known for its plot." I don't think "but its erotica!" is enough to hand-wave all basic fundamentals but whatever, fine. Then let's judge it on its erotic merit.

There's none. What sex there is has nothing erotic or titillating or sexy to it - its usually a case of telling over showing. "He fucked her." That is the entire scene. Most of the scenes are just that short and simple, maybe throwing in a single sentence of groping a boob, biting a neck, or an oddly-clinical mention of fingering. For something that was supposed to be about the vampire metaphor for sex, there's precious little sex, and the sex is largely vanilla with set dressing. They are fucking....but like, there's blood! They are fucking, but like, the sex swing is made from a pelvic bone.

There's a few parts that are graphically violent. The opening chapter features a murder-orgy that involves vampires fucking open wounds, Human Centipede 3-style. Later on someone is forced to have sex with a decapitated head and torso. Its trying so hard to be edgy that it falls on its face because its just edgy to be edgy - there's no purpose to the violence in the narrative, there's no real purpose to the violence in the meta-narrative or symbolically, there's no depth. Its just "vampires are crazy blood drinking sadists" which isn't exactly ground-breaking.

There's a lot of rape. Nearly all the sex is rape. I know I was irritated with the rape in a recent book I read but this book is written so clumsily, so poorly I can't even be mad. There's a scene where a couple go to a park and gang members leap from the bushes to just start raping everybody. To the point where they are exclaiming, "Hey, I'm raping you." mid-act, as if the characters or the readers weren't sure. Thanks for clearing that up, gang dude. There's similar dialogue later - multiple characters let you know that "That's my dick" or "My dick is real."

The main villain of the book is a Tzimisce named Vykos. Tzimisce have a power called vicissitude - the power to shape flesh and bone to their will, nearly limitlessly. Vykos is presented as a spiky dude with a Prince Albert. Come the fuck on! You have a character that can essentially shape themselves into anything! Honestly the biggest issue I have with the book is the author had 0 imagination, hence the awkward violence and terrible dialogue. Vykos could do all sorts of weird shit only a vampire could - change genders during sex. Grow three dicks, each with 4 heads like an echidna. Have a vagina mouth. I don't know. Something. Anything! Would it be sexy? Scary? I have no clue! At least it'd be different. Similarly, there's Toreador vampires in the novel, whose primary powers involve art and seduction, and whom can fall under the spell of beauty. Why include these if you can't actually think of novel, beautiful things they could do with their preternatural speed, strength, and grace?

There's a million things this book could have been. It could have hit the plot and drama harder - VtM as a rpg system hinges on interpersonal relationships, manipulation, and drama more than any other system alive, and seeing layers of seduction and manipulation to that end would have been cool. It could have explored vampire powers more to display how freaky shit would be when you have hundreds of years to get bored with vanilla sex and can shape flesh to your will. The author could even have found out how humans had sex (or even just how humans interact) first, before trying to write an erotic novel. Ah, well. show less

My god! I really wish I hadn't read this book.

I knew before I started on this one that it wasn't going to be a light read, but even knowing that, I certainly didn't expect it to be quite so intense. It starts out with our protagonist, Val, travelling around from country to country and city to city as she always does. Being wealthy she can do as she pleases and so seems to have dedicated her life to the pursuit of pleasure, but even pleasure gets a little tedious after a while and she begins show more to think about a place known only as 'The City', a place her mother spoke of when she was little. By all accounts it's a place of such great pleasures and perversions that you'll never experience anything like it, ever, no matter what.

So, off she goes in search of a man she knows who she thinks may be able to direct her to this wonderous place. She finds him of course and here it begins to get a little stranger, with a more fantastical feel to the story. Surfice to say there's an incense burner and a lot of green flame and hey-presto you're in another place, yep, you're in 'The City'.

Up until now the story is much as I'd been led to believe, a bit of sex here and there and perversions noticed in passing and taken part in too, but once our, now two, protagonists enter 'The City' everything really turns perverted in the most extreme fashion you can imagine. The next god-knows-how-many-pages take you on a ride through just about every torturous, perverted, sick and depraved sexual activity that you'll ever have the displeasure to endure. I use the word endure because that's what it was for me. It truly was a test of endurance. I passed the test by reaching the end of this awful ride when Val manages to escape the sick perversions of 'The City' along with a young girl she brings with her back to the mundane world(who's mother incidently turns out to be her friend, Majeed, who she initially thought was a man only to find out quite early on is actually a hermaphradite). Majeed decides to stay on in 'The City' for reasons of his own, which I found to be a little odd, but then after forcing myself on through this sick-fest of a story, nothing really surprises me for long anymore.

Anyway, what can I say about a book like this?

Well, I can say in all honesty that I hope I never meet the author. I'm sure she's a very pleasant, well adjusted young lady, but am I willing to take the chance that she may be otherwise? No. No I'm really, seriously not. You could say that everything I've said here could be taken as a huge compliment, and you'd be right. It could. Or you could say that this story lingers on the sick and perverted acts with just that little bit too much gusto and zeal, and you'd be right there too. You could also say that the characters are well written as is the story as a whole, and you'd also be right there too. But when all's said and done I'm looking for books to take me out of a world I find to be quite dull and a little lacking at the best of times, a book whose story and characters I care about and want to either get behind or rail against or at least feel some sort of affinity with. Unfortunately, where this book fails for me is in the fact that I not only can't relate at all to any of the very unlikable characters, but the story itself goes where only a very sick mind would want to follow. This is a strange thing to say considering I love a good horror story and can usually take pretty much anything a novel, or in fact a movie can throw at me. I think what makes the difference here is the very fact that there really isn't any redeeming factor at all. It's characters are depressingly self-centred and intensly unlikable, while their goals in life amount to nothing more than the persuit of greater and greater perversions and more and more invented tortures. The sole thing of note that this novel left me with was a very deep and very unwelcome feeling of depression. And I mean that in a very real sense. I felt depressed. For hours and hours afterwards.

I'm entirely at a loss to find one single thing to recommend about this book to anyone. So why am I giving it 4 stars then? That doesn't make sense, right? Well, as much as this book left me with a lot of feelings I'd rather have not had, it is well written(even given the unlikable characters) and there is a story of sorts(if you're an unashamed sado-masochist at the most severe torture-porn end of the scale)

So. Not my cup of tea at all. I couldn't wait to finish it. I'm so glad I am finished it!

...and yet, I still feel it deserves 4 stars.

God, I'm soo depressed! show less

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A horror short story about a woman with a rare form of synesthesia, who can feel sound waves and a dangerous rescue mission she undertakes (to rescue a lover and friends) in a cave with a nasty past. As Karyn spelunks through a well-described cave system, the tension builds as she encounters physical and mental stress on the way to the alien horror chamber. Her use of headphones to dampen or eliminate the siren sounds seems like a good idea, relying on her gift. The side story about her show more relationship with Pree was solid too. While the final cave scene reveal was a bit disappointing, what happens when she emerges from the cave was not. I liked it, especially for free on the tor.com website. show less