Reviewed by Tim Tobin
Follow him on Twitter @TimTobin43
While the poetry selections were generally excellent my favorite was "Katherine Knight" because of the eye challenging imagery.
POETRY
In "If I Did It" Lizzie Borden warns us of silly forensics.
"Catatonic" shows us what happens in and on the coffin with deadly images.
"Invisible Underworld Concubine" is short but not very sweet. Beware Satan's whore!
"The Devil's Love Song" takes a philosophical look at the undead, choosing Satan over God.
"Goddess Kali" Very nicely versed and rhythmic.
"Queen of Hell" A well done verse of the Queen and her lover.
"Jesi Belle Waits for the Hounds" and "Chewing on the Devil's Fat" got lost making their point.
SHORT STORIES
"Where The Clouds Are Far Behind You" is my favorite story because of the vivid imagery and page-turning pace.
"Dancing with the Wolf" tells an engaging but imperfect story of a trapper and a white wolf mistaken for a forest goddess. The author misses opportunities to "show" by telling the story. He uses too many adverbs and adjectives. There is no background for the imagined appearance of the forest goddess. And the dance with the wolf would be better as a fully told climax. Yet -- I enjoyed the story very much.
"Who Fucked Up Kelly Yesterday?" is best characterized as bizzaro or surreal, quirky enough to be entertaining. The story contains excellent use of metaphor and employs an unexpected twist at the end. The story uses gore, violence and adolescent sex fantasies as props. And I keep wondering why the teenagers didn't call the police when they found their dead friend.
"Still A Better Love Story Than Twilight" tries too hard for imagery and is predicable.
"Broken Soul" is disjointed but contains surprising turns.
"The Last Devil of Men" Dreams within dreams. Madness within madness. In death Salvador Dali confronts the demon who drove him to insanity. Perhaps a bit too long for my taste.
"Let The Laughter Begin" is a ghost story on unrequited love, well written and told.
"Entree Of The Damned" answers the burning question of the best way to kill a child vampire. Yum!
"The Hybrid" tells the story of a human-animal hybrid (no, I won't give it away!), a short but very entertaining tale.
"Elizabeth Bathory: A Fluid Exchange" Semen can cure the strangest problem!And woe to the man who cannot produce, semen that is. However, the story stopped without an ending (so to speak!). I'm still groping for that ending (lol).
"A Patchwork From Hell" is a fairly predictable tale of a woman who sells her soul for beauty.
The remaining stories struggled to make their points.