The Last Night by Nico Rosso

TITLE: The Last Night
AUTHOR: Nico Rosso
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 40k)
GENRE: Horror erotic romance
COST: $3.59

The world is not like it was. Earthquakes have torn apart the earth’s center, releasing toxins into the air that have changed some people to monsters of stone who eat ash. Those who survived hide away, trying not to become the next victims, but resources are scarce and the monsters can’t be killed. Erica has banded together with a group of others, hiding away in a ruined hotel, determined to fight as long as possible. The despair that takes over so many seems like it might have a reprieve when a man on a motorcycle shows up in the middle of a fight, with weapons that actually leave the monsters for dead. Erica wants to learn how he does it, but Jake isn’t willing to give up his only bargaining chip for free. At least, until he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to fight alone anymore…

This is not your typical romance. No flowery language, no prolonged dwelling on emotions. It might not be to everybody’s taste, but man, it sure was to mine.

The story starts out with Erica on the cusp of another fight. Night is beginning to fall, and the ashers, the name they’ve given the ash-eating stone-fleshed monsters that some humans mutated to, are attacking. Nothing kills them, but they do what they can to hold them back until they get tired or look for easier prey. In the middle of yet another night of this, an unknown man on a motorcycle drives into the scene, swinging blows left and right that take down the monsters. His name is Jake, and he’s discovered a way to kill them. He offers the information at a trade – he needs supplies just as much as the next person – and his mercenary ways really turn Erica off. There’s a connection between them, though, a recognition of fighter to fighter, and eventually Jake shows Erica the trick anyway. He decides to spend the night, but his bike has opened up a possibility for her that she’s desperate to realize.

The first thing the reader will notice is the author’s terse style. Sentences are short, usually simple, and dwell on the visceral rather than the cerebral. That doesn’t work for every kind of story – it certainly didn't for the first story I read by this author a year ago – but it does for this post-apocalyptic horror one. It creates an urgency both in the action and the emotions, and it worked to suck me into each moment as it played out within the plot.

It also helped to put me straight into Erica and Jake’s shoes. They are the fighting spirit of this, those that don’t want to dwell on what they’ve lost but instead find a way to survive in this new world order. These are the doers, the ones that legends are created about, and together, they form the core of what turns the tide for this small band of humans. I loved how the basis of Jake’s feelings for Erica stems from how brilliant she is fighting. He saw straight to the heart of her, more than anybody else ever did. Erica, on the other hand, was far more guarded about her emotions and trusting Jake as explicitly as he did her. The give and take of this brief acquaintance as it blazed into something hotter was a treat to watch.

My only quibbles come toward the end where I found it a little predictable as to what would happen. I won’t spoil, but there was one moment of discord between Jake and Erica that had me thinking, “Oh, please don’t have him…” and then he went and did the predictable thing I wished he hadn’t (not because it didn’t make sense or was a bad move but that it felt a little trite considering how unpredictable it had been up to that point). I wondered last year if the author’s voice would come across better with a better editor, and I think this proves it will. It still won't work well for less action-oriented stuff, but for this particular story, it was more than enough.

Readability	8/10 – A terse, no-nonsense voice seems atypical for the genre, but works in this context
Hero	8/10 – Love that what he loves about her is her fight not just her looks
Heroine	8/10 – Honorable when she doesn’t even know it, a real fighter
Entertainment value	8/10 – Honestly, got so wrapped up in it all that it gave me nightmares
World building	9/10 – Dark, visceral, and horrifying
TOTAL:	41/50

Whispering Bones by Rita Vetere

TITLE: Whispering Bones
AUTHOR: Rita Vetere
PUBLISHER: Lyrical Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 61k)
GENRE: Horror
COST: $5.50

A child’s horrific death during the Black Plague unleashes a curse that terrorizes generation after generation of the man she blames. It spans time, grows stronger with each kill. When Anna LaServa takes a job to design a hotel on the grounds the child haunts, she has no idea what she’s got herself into…

Though the majority of the books I review here are romance, in my reading world they only constitute a fraction of what I consume. I’ve been reading horror and suspense alongside romance since I picked up my first Stephen King when I was ten, but there aren’t as many small presses doing non-romance genre fiction as there are romance pubs (at least to the quality I’d hope for). I’d definitely review more if I could get my hands on them.

For a good part of this story, the plot jumps between three different storylines. There’s nine-year-old Isabella in Venice of 1576, when the plague is devastating the country. There’s Dr. Rossi in Venice of 1927, recently hired to be the chief doctor at a nearby asylum. And there’s Anna LaServa in modern day Toronto, about to travel to Venice to begin a two-week project designing a new hotel. Anna visits her grandmother – the only family she has left – before leaving, but when her grandmother hears where she is going, she begs Anna not to go. Anna tries to convince the old woman that it’s good for her career and goes anyway. There, she meets Alejandro, the man in charge of the hotel’s construction, and together they go out to the island that will be the site. Anna is spooked almost from the first, but things only get progressively worse the longer she stays and discovers an asylum was once on the grounds.

I usually try to avoid revealing too many spoilers in reviews as I’m particularly spoiler-phobic, but I’m going to give a couple away in this because I think they’re important to get out there. I almost stopped reading this book about a third of the way in. Now, I knew when I started that there would be a child’s death – that’s in the blurb – but by the time I reached page 78, I had to read in some detail about two separate events that are very triggery for me. The first involved Anna. Anna is in her mid-forties and never married, mostly because she never got over being raped when she was fifteen. I was fine with the reference to it, but then there’s a passage where she remembers it, in some detail. Less than twenty pages later, a woman in the 1927 storyline gives birth to a stillborn baby, again in some detail. Frankly, if I’d known the book had contained either one of those I would never have bought it in the first place. They tend to be dealbreakers for me, but after stopping on this for a day or two, I convinced myself to go back and finish it, with the promise that I’d stop for real if something else triggered me.

There wasn’t any one particular event, thank goodness. But after that point, the three storylines begin to converge, and the entire second half of the novel is unrelenting grotesquerie and horror.

It pulls no punches. The events are graphic, the violence frequent and bloody. Evil is a palpable, toxic entity that permeates the Italian setting, and the rising terror all too real. Anna maintains her cool a surprisingly long time, but once she loses it, the knots the story is already tying constrict even more. For me, it was too much. I only kept reading because I figured I’d made it through the worst of what could trigger me, and I needed to see how it ended. But when I read horror, I need the occasional relief from the darkness – a funny line, a sweeter scene, anything different in tone to allow me as a reader to take a breath before sinking back into the terror. I didn’t really get it in this. I didn’t get the ending I needed, either. I finished this frustrated with how everything worked out, even though I know it’s quite a common trope in the horror genre. For me, though, it didn’t work, probably because I was already burned out with the evil overload by that point.

To be fair, I can’t recommend this one way or another. It didn’t work for me, but my reasons are very personal and specific. Other readers of this genre might not have the same problems I did.

Readability	7/10 – Unrelentingly horrific with unseen potential triggers, I almost gave up on this a third of the way in
Characterization	6/10 – While the female protagonist comes to life, most of the secondary characters do not
Plot	7/10 – Maybe not the most original, but the original setting and time elements add to it
Entertainment value	5/10 – Even as much as I got triggered in this, I might have scored it higher if it wasn’t for the truly disappointing ending
World building	9/10 – Atmosphere and setting are so strong, I wanted to go to Venice even in spite of all the terrible elements
TOTAL:	34/50

Billy Bong by Yeva Wiest

TITLE: Billy Bong
AUTHOR: Yeva Wiest
PUBLISHER: Lyrical Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 24k)
GENRE: Horror satire
COST: $3.50

A decades-old murder. An aging killer with a twisted sense of vengeance. Oh, don’t forget the hoodoo man, two grave robbers, a senior citizen hairdresser and her seventy-six-year-old client determined to solve the riddle of her son’s death, Betsy Wetsy, and a skull called Billy Bong…

Few authors create such whacked out, unique, colorful characters like Yeva Wiest. Sometimes, she reminds me of Carl Hiaasen, the zany plots and bright casts he always manages to come up with. Even when the humor might not necessarily work for me, her characters are never dull and always unusual.

This novella starts out in 1970, with Billy Boone getting high in a motel room with a prostitute he’s picked up. Their “date” turns sour quickly, and he ends up dead. His biological parents never learn the truth until decades later, when the prostitute who killed Billy gets mad at him all over again and hires two men to steal his head for her so she can get a bong made out of the skull. Yes, you read that right. And the story only gets crazier from there, zigging and zagging from character to character until they inevitably crash together at the end.

To try and describe all the characters would take the joy out of reading it. As always, they are a cast that runs the sexual gamut – lesbians, married men, straight men, cross-dressing men, straight women, you name it. Several shine, like Janice and Sarah Beth. In 1970, Janice had stolen Sarah Beth’s husband from her, but once she realized the only thing he had going for him was his cock, she dumped him. Sarah Beth in turn decided not to hold it against Janice because a good hairdresser is always hard to find, and the two women have been friends ever since. They’re the ones who hop a bus to Houston to try and find out what happened to Sarah Beth’s son (Janice’s stepson), and their antics drive the plot forward, even when it lurches into creepy territory with the killer.

Did I laugh at the story? No, not really, but I did smile, and when it was done, I had vivid impressions of each and every single one of the characters. One thing to note, too. I’ve read and reviewed two other releases by this author from this particular publisher, and had issues with them editorially. That was not the case in this one. There is still some headhopping, and there are still occasional errors, but nothing nearly as detrimental to the reading experience as before. It’s wonderful to see. It makes it so much easier to enjoy the author’s creative imaginings when I don’t get tripped up on spelling mistakes.

Readability	8/10 – Swift and graphic, and far fewer editorial mistakes as previous works
Characterization	8/10 – This author creates some of the quirkiest characters out there
Plot	7/10 – Points for originality, though some of the coincidences seemed extreme
Entertainment value	7/10 – Not as funny as I expected, but always interesting
World building	8/10 – Unique and immersive
TOTAL:	38/50

Bordello Dolls by Ellen Ashe

TITLE: Bordello Dolls
AUTHOR: Ellen Ashe
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 11k)
GENRE: Paranormal horror erotic romance
COST: ₤1.69

Scarlet Boujois, visionary, feels smothered by the demands others place on her abilities. She looks for peace whenever she can, and when she takes a stroll before a heavy summer storm, she stumbles across a small antique shop. Its owner, the enigmatic Nicolai Van Adler, proves unreadable, and far too seductive to resist. Scarlet falls under his spell, but even though someone warns her of a ghostly bordello and its evil owner – a man who bears the same name as her new lover – all she wants is to find him again…

Ellen Ashe is one of those authors I want to love, which is why I always look at her new releases with interest. She’s one of the more original authors out there, both in style and ideas, and when so many of the books I read can bleed together or be forgotten completely within a few weeks, originality is good. She has a remarkable talent for creating atmospheric works. This short story is definitely not an exception.

Though I didn’t fall head over heels for this, I can most assuredly say it’s my favorite of the three stories I’ve read of hers so far. Her prose is sumptuous, with a definite Baroque quality to it, especially as she describes the bordello and its denizens. It fits the subject matter perfectly; the entire opening of Scarlet’s thoughts on storms as she heads out for a walk before one is creative, rich, and a joy to read. A lot of this skill is prevalent throughout the story, but while the editing on this is tighter than it has been in earlier works, there are enough sloppy mistakes to weaken her prose. Nicolai’s last name, for instance, takes on two different spellings throughout; sometimes, it’s Van Adler, and others, it’s Van Alder. There are a few tense shifts, spelling mistakes, and assorted other minor problems as well. I know a lot of people won’t even notice them, but frankly, considering how lavish her prose can be, for this reader the mistakes detract from being able to enjoy it. Because that is by far her best talent in writing.

The story is not your typical romance. Ashe likes to take a look at the macabre, and in this case, the hero is creepy and malevolent, a pimp for his prostitutes even as he seeks out his mate. Scarlet is sucked under his spell; the entire story is much like Dracula as Scarlet embodies both Lucy and Mina, and the bordello dolls mirror the female vampires Dracula keeps at his castle. There is definite menace there, but the construct of the romance remains true, as long as you look at it from the hero and heroine’s perspective. They love each other, they want to be together, anybody that opposes that is the villain. Even if the villain is not someone who would normally be considered evil in the everyday world.

Even knowing all that, I can’t say that the romance really works for me as strongly as the rest of the story does. I find the focus on atmosphere and setting ends up shortchanging both leads’ characterization. Scarlet’s motivations are skimmed over – the sex is good, and she can’t stop thinking about Nikolai, therefore she must seek him out. There’s the bonus that she can’t read his soul, but that’s never fully explored. Scarlet ends up coming across like a puppet for the first half of the story as a result. Nikolai fares a little better, but because his history is shadowed so much, I ended up having a lot more questions about him than answers. Both become guides leading me through the story, instead of real people I get sucked into believing.

Because of the author’s voice and originality, though, this is a story that lingers long after it’s over. I don’t love Ellen Ashe yet, but if she keeps improving as she has been, and sticks with these dark tales that she so clearly adores, I have high hopes that I will.

Readability	8/10 – Sumptuous prose, though some sloppy editorial mistakes hold it back
Hero	6/10 – Some dark promise there, but there are too many questions cheated of answers in this short format to make him truly satisfying
Heroine	5/10 – Her motivations are kept superficial because of the format
Entertainment value	8/10 – A story that lingers, long after it’s done
World building	9/10 – Original and lavish
TOTAL:	36/50

Windwalker's Mate by Margaret L. Carter

TITLE: Windwalker’s Mate
AUTHOR: Margaret L. Carter
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 62k)
GENRE: Horror romance
COST: $7.00

Shannon Bryce is terrified. Her four-year-old son is exhibiting psychic powers she desperately wants to suppress, but all her attempts to squelch them are backfiring. He was conceived during a cult ritual where the cult leader wished to create the child of the Windwalker, a god of dark powers from another dimension. Shannon escaped the cult in time to save herself, but the past is catching up to her. The leader is back, as is his son…who also happens to be her son’s biological father...the question remains, can she now save her son?

I was trying to describe the plot of this story to some friends after reading it. After three different attempts and a lot of blank looks, I gave up. I couldn’t do it. I sat on this, hoping it would become clearer, but when that didn’t happen, I decided to just write the review. I’m not sure I can summarize it without it sounding silly, when, in execution, it’s really not. Because there’s a cult, and a demonic god from another dimension, and a four-year-old little boy whose psychic powers seem pretty limitless, and this whole opening of the gate between dimensions to destroy the world…and you can see why I might look a little odd trying to explain it.

Ultimately, though the story is billed as paranormal romance, it works most effectively as horror. Shannon is suitably fearful of her son’s powers. The nervousness she has is believable and well-built, so much so that when Nathan isn’t quite as scared as she is, he lost sympathy points for me. Nathan is Daniel’s biological father, and while he expresses concern, searching her out when he fears for her safety, his curiosity and fascination with all the evil stuff they were involved in made it hard for me to like him. I think it’s because I’m a mother, with a boy close to Daniel’s age. I identified a lot with Shannon. I never understood why she would be so willing to accept some of his advances when it was obvious how much more important her son was to her than he was to Nathan.

When it comes to the prose, it’s mostly evocative and tightly written. Don’t let the extremely purple prose at the very beginning of the book fool you. It opens with: A vast, jagged landscape stretched before her. A shimmering, pale violet effulgence pervaded it like a luminous fog. I almost stopped there. It’s describing a dream, and while I’m sure it’s meant to be atmospheric, it’s so over the top that it’s too much. Thankfully, the rest of the book is not like that. The over-description vanishes for the most part once Shannon wakes up from this nightmare, and the phrasing simplifies into something still original without all the word baggage.

Tension is tight and nicely paced, and if the book travels familiar ground sometimes – “You're suggesting we should have sex to get our telepathy back?” for instance – it doesn’t detract too badly from the experience. Vaguely haunting with a side of creepy. Just don’t go along strictly for the romance.

Readability	8/10 – In spite of a very purple initial scene, most of the story is evocative enough to be original without getting heavy-handed.
Hero	5/10 – His reasons for his fascination with the Windwalker are never explained enough, which makes it difficult to make him sympathetic and not creepy.
Heroine	7/10 – Her maternal angst and realistic reactions give her depth that makes her later actions more credible.
Entertainment value	7/10 – It works far better as a horror story than a romance, because it’s too easy to side with Shannon’s fear in the first 2/3’s of the book.
World building	8/10 – The depth of the cult is nicely explored, as is the heroine’s rising fears.
TOTAL:	35/50

Misery Loves Company by Ellen Ashe

TITLE: Misery Loves Company
AUTHOR: Ellen Ashe
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 11k)
GENRE: Horror erotic romance
COST: ₤1.69

Recovering alcoholic, recently divorced Lola is trying to rebuild her life. In a desperate last bid, she rents an isolated cabin for two weeks, cutting herself off from all modern conveniences. She hopes to reconnect with her art, maybe find a fresh start. But when the creepy caretaker warns her she’ll never last the whole two weeks, she realizes that all might not be well. Especially when she starts hearing things…seeing things…feeling things…

It was very apparent reading the blurb and excerpt on the publisher’s website that this was going to be a dark story. I was intrigued by the excerpt, especially. It was moody and melancholy, promises the short story kept. If there is one thing this author does extremely well, it’s create atmosphere. The entire story has a hallucinogenic feel to it. The narrator is unreliable, and the reader is swept along with her fear and confusion.

The ghost, whose name she learns is Daniel, is such an integral part of all this confusion that he creeps me out. A lot. A lot lot lot. Lola is aroused by him, probably because she’s lonely and desperate, but frankly, almost from the moment he gets introduced, I didn’t like him. The title is pretty much this ghost’s motto, and misery doesn’t even begin to cover it. Lola is so messed up, she starts losing a grip on what is real and what isn’t very quickly. Everything just spirals down from there.

There are minor technical flaws in the story, including awkward phrasing and editing issues that should have been cleaned up – like “griped” for “gripped,” and extra words in sentences that were clearly missed on a rewrite. The author’s prose gets held back by these mistakes. Her voice is very original, her descriptions haunting and evocative. It’s a shame to see it tarnished by simple mistakes.

If I were to label this an erotic horror story, I’d like it more. But I get the sneaky suspicion, because of the ending, this is meant to be a very dark romance. Unfortunately, the romance didn’t work for me. At all. In large part, because of the ending. I don’t want to say why that was, though; my other reservations aside, this story worked extremely well if read as horror and I’m not going to spoil it for those are intrigued. I’m kind of glad I took another chance with this author. I liked this one more the first story I read by her. What I’d really like to see is this author with a very solid editor, one who would erase all her technical errors and smooth out her pacing issues. She’s got tremendous potential, with a distinct style and a solid sense of the macabre. It would be fun to read something that takes full advantage of her strengths.

Readability	7/10 – Some unfortunate editing hinders what otherwise is some very atmospheric writing.
Hero	3/10 – I’m sure his melancholy was meant to make him sympathetic, but I thought he was just creepy.
Heroine	6/10 – Messed up to the nth degree
Entertainment value	6/10 – As horror, this works very well for me. As a romance…not so much.
World building	7/10 – Extremely atmospheric, evoking the mood very well, but at the end, I’m still left with questions of, “What the hell exactly happened?”
TOTAL:	29/50

Ebony by T.C. LoTempio

TITLE: Ebony
AUTHOR: T.C. LoTempio
PUBLISHER: Whiskey Creek Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 82k)
GENRE: Thriller Horror
COST: $5.99

Few people escape the town of Ebony, and the few that do always come back. Such is the case for reporter Jess McCall. She never thinks she’ll return until a mysterious envelope from her estranged sister forces her hand. Worried that something has happened, Jess returns to Ebony, only to be faced with story after story about why Amanda’s not around. None of them satisfy her. It takes teaming up with fellow reporter Frankie Marshall for some of the pieces to come together, but the truth of Amanda’s – and other’s – disappearances is almost too horrific to face.The undead. Voudou. An insane mastermind. How are they ever going to survive?

The book starts out taut and intense, with an opening scene that sucks you in. Unfortunately, the momentum set by the beginning starts to falter a third of the way into the story, so that by halfway through, it’s derailed enough to fail to deliver on its early promise. This is about the time the author hits the pitfalls of necessary exposition, and too many scenes are spent researching and explaining voudou for the average reader. It’s given in long, clunky scenes that had me glazing over just like Frankie the first time he heard it. By the time I hit the third of such scenes, I was skimming. It was either that, or stop reading altogether.

A good editor should have helped this promising author correct those, but unfortunately, I suspect the editor on this book wasn’t as strong as she needed. There are several incorrect word usages throughout the book, as well as several continuity errors that pulled me out of a scene (Frankie referring to Amanda once when he clearly met Jess, for instance). Maybe she got sucked into the story enough to miss them. That’s a shame for Ms. LoTempio, though, because those kinds of errors keep Ebony from being a truly creepy read.

Where the book shines is in creating memorable characters, both with the citizens of Ebony and the town itself. Anybody who ever grew up in a small town knows a girl like Tally Whitehall, or has encountered the wall of silence that greets Jess on her return. As a heroine, Jess works just fine, though sometimes I wondered how she ever survived some of her reporting assignments if she acted out on the field like she did in Ebony. Her chemistry with Frankie is compelling, but I was a little disappointed when his history wasn’t used to better advantage in the story. He was, for me, the strongest and most believable protagonist of the bunch. I would have preferred to see more of him and less of a couple others.

I love a good horror story, but ultimately, this book falls a little short. With tighter plotting, this could have been one of those stay-up-until-midnight-finishing stories. As it is, it was a mildly enjoyable distraction for a couple of days.

Readability	7/10 – Easy prose is hindered by some sloppy editing and clunky blocks of exposition that kill momentum.
Heroine	7/10 – Spunky enough to counter the really stupid moves she occasionally makes.
Plot	6/10 – There’s a lot of deus ex machina in how things get resolved, and while the story has potential for being truly creepy, other elements cripple it.
Entertainment value	6/10 – Enjoyable, but not nearly as scary as it could have been
World building	8/10 – To the author’s credit, Ebony came to life for me.
TOTAL:	34/50