I Slept with Slender Man

I Slept with Slender Man by Emma Steele
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Virginia, the prettiest senior in Killmeister High, has a problem. All of the boys are too intimidated by her beauty to ask her out. When she witnesses her classmates having an orgy, the Slender Man appears to satisfy her needs...

Damn, this is some crazy shit. After reading Debbie Does Monsterland, I decided to give Emma Steele's initial effort a try. This is monsterotica with flavors of horror and bizarro stirred into the mix.

Wikipedia tells me The Slender Man existed before this short story. However, I don't think Slender Man got to impale a high school senior with DD breasts on his twenty foot penis before this story.

The writing is more like horror or bizarro writing than erotica. Still, the sexual component is there, only very, very, very strange.

I Slept With Slender Man is a pretty powerful and memorable short story. I'm not sure I liked it but it's memorable enough to hit four territory. Four out of five stars.

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Journey to the Abortosphere

Journey to Abortosphere by Kirk Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While in mourning for his first love, an ivory shoe horn named Katherine, an unemployed loser named Ed buys a bizarre machine at an auction, a machine that has a very humanlike anus built into the side and may hold the key to all reality. And after that, things get a little strange...

I've read a ton of bizarro books over the years. Some proved to be fairly ordinary stories with a few weird elements welded on to them. Others were pretty strange. This one takes the taco.

Journey to the Abortosphere has its roots in the fabled Philadelphia Experiment, an alleged military operation in invisiblity from radar that went horribly wrong, seeing men partially materializing inside the bulkheads of the ship and/or lost somewhere in space-time. Kirk Jones asks "What happened to the anuses?" or something to that effect. The tale is peppered with time jumps, parallel realities, government agents who may or may not be obsessed with waffles, and buttholes.

I feel I should mention early on that the Abortosphere has nothing to do with abortion. It's God's first attempt at heaven, abandoned and used as a dumping ground.

The story is pretty crazy. Ed finds himself teleporting back and forth to the U.S.S. Eldridge in 1938 and 1983, as well as to his parent's house and to hospital. Once the Eldridge was wandering space-time, pursued by a twelve ton cast-iron fetus bristling with alien weaponry, the story's true depths unfolded. Also, there was some talk of a creation myth starring some Transformers.

There were some big ideas being thrown around but it was mostly a story about inanimate objects with human anuses and the end of space-time as we know it. Three out of five stars.

For more information on the Philadelphia Experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadel...

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Debbie Does Monsterland

Since growing 50 feet tall and being imprisoned in a scientific research facility, Nancy has trouble satisfying her womanly urges. That is, until, she sees a documentary about Monster Island on TV and knows what she has to do. Can Nancy escape her prison and make it Monster Island to satisfy her carnal urges?

Monsterotica is apparently a big deal. While I find the concept somewhat ridiculous, I had to give this one a shot when it was free on the Kindle for a day. How was it?

Dirty fun entertainment, that's how it was. It's twisted smut and has some hilarious prose, both a parody of Monsterotica and (probably) some of the best written Monsterotica ever put to paper.

There's a certain poetry to the prose, funny considering it's a story about a 50 foot tall woman boning various daikaiju, or giant monsters. Rodan, Gamera, and others all get a turn. My main gripe with the book was that Godzilla didn't get a go at Nancy.

This was a three star read for me. Monsterotica enthusiasts will probably rate it even higher.

Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior

Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior by Cecelia Ahern
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When the Doctor witnesses a masked ball on a far off planet, he finds himself in the middle of a dispute between two factions. Who are the Bog Warriors? And can The Doctor get Prince Zircon and Princess Ash together? Of course he can! He's The Doctor...

I got this from Netgalley.

The Time Trips series has been a mixed bag. I enjoyed the hell out of some of them but others didn't hold my interest. This one is firmly in the "meh" category.

On the surface, this is a retelling of Cinderella on an alien world with The Doctor involved. Unfortunately, he's only on the periphery for most of the story. As I've said in the past, when I read a Doctor Who novel or short story, I'd like the Doctor to be front and center, flying around in the TARDIS and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow like only he can. He was pretty much a background character in this.

However, when the Doctor was on stage, he was perfectly rendered, saving this book from one star territory. The Bog Warriors were also interesting. The rest of the story, not so much.

I'm not familiar with Cecelia Ahern's work but maybe people who are would get more mileage out of this one. Two stars and it had to work for them.

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Ceremony of Flies

When a showgirl named Kitty accidentally kills her boss, she quickly finds herself on the run with a petty criminal named Rex. When two more people wind up dead, Kitty, Rex, and an odd young boy named Harvey head for Mexico...

I got this from Netgalley.

The DarkFuse novella series continues to impress. Ceremony of Flies is a road trip novel through the American southwest, from Las Vegas to Mexico, with lots of killing and creepy shit along the way.

Even though it's a pretty slim story, there's a lot going on in Ceremony of Flies. Kate Jonez does a great job of pacing, both in action and how she doles out the backgrounds of Kitty and Rex is small morsels. I liked how Kitty gradually made Rex and Harvey her family, despite Harvey being one creepy little kid. Although, when you pick up a strange kid at the crossroads, you're pretty much asking for it.

Kitty is a pretty good narrator, her black humor a nice counterpoint to the generally icky feeling the book gradually acquires along the way. Oddly enough, the part of the book I found most revolting was the swim in the Salton Sea, one of the foulest lakes on Earth from what I'm told.

3.5 out of 5 stars. I'll be watching for more Kate Jonez books to pop up.

Hangtown

Hangtown by Karen Sandler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When a teenager is found hanging from a bridge near her house, Detective Janelle Watkins doesn't think it's suicide. But does that have anything to do with the threatening texts Janelle has been getting?

I got this from Netgalley.

Damaged goods P.I. Janelle Watkins is back in another thriller from Karen Sandler. She's no longer burning herself but Hangtown explores more of the darker aspects of her past, namely a string of anonymous bar hook-ups, in the course of her investigations.

Multiple threads are woven through this tale: Janelle's stalker, the murder of Zach Stinson, and whatever is going on with the guy she's trailing for fraudulent insurance claim. However, my favorite part of the book was the way Janelle's relationships with Ken and Cassie evolved from the first book.

The book wasn't a runaway candidate for thriller of the year, though. I thought the resolution was a little unsatisfying and the plot line regarding the homeless man living on her property seemed thrown in. It was one of those mysteries that is no way solvable, which I'm not a big fan of.

So, I liked it but I wasn't in love with it. I'm also not sure if I liked it enough to continue on with the series. Too many books, too little time, etc. Three out of five stars.

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The Shadow Master

The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When his brother is killed, Cosimo de Medici declares war on the Lorraines. Too bad a close associate of the Medici family, Lorenzo, protege to Galileo, is in love with Lucia, daughter of Duke Lorraine...

I got this from Angry Robot via Netgalley.

In an alternate world resembling 16th century Italy, a plague has ravaged the world and much of humanity takes refuge in the Walled City where the Medicis and the Lorraines vie for superiority. The Medicis have Galileo and the Lorraines have Leonardo.

There was a lot of enjoyable stuff going on in this. While the basic plot resembles Romeo and Juliet, there's a whole lot of other things going on, like arcane science practiced by Galileo and Leonardo. The politics of the Walled City are explored, including the plague victims, and the nature of reality is touched upon. The mysterious Shadow Master and the Nameless One pull the strings from the shadows. I wasn't really sure where the story was going to go.

The writing was really good. There was some unexpected humor and Cormick painted a vivid picture of his world. I liked that The Shadow Master rose above it's Romeo and Juliet roots.

However, I'm not precisely sure what actually happened in the later parts of the book. I kind of understood what the machines of the ancients did but I found the ending really muddy. I liked parts of the book quite a bit but it lost me near the end. Three out of five stars.

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