(pb; 2013: sequel to Dirty Secret Love: A Tale of Submission)
Review:
Equal parts heart and carnal explicit heat, this worthwhile sequel to Dark Secret Love not only matches the genre-transcendent excellence of its source novel, but raises the emotional and sexual bar of Samantha's erotic and loving journey. Chock full of necessary mindfrak and revelations (minor and milestone) for its heroine, this dance of control and relative chaos makes for a standout read. Worth owning, this - as is its source novel.
(pb; 2013: erotic novel - first entry in the Story of Submission series)
From the back cover:
"Dark Secret Love is a modern-day Story of O, a 9 1/2 Weeks-style journey fueled by lust, longing and the search for true love. Inspired by her own BDSM exploits and private diaries, Alison Tyler draws on twenty-five years of penning sultry stories to create a scorchingly hot work of fiction, a memoir-inspired novel with reality at its core. A luscious and literary experience of authenticity. Dark Secret Love is a romance for readers who desire sweetness edged with danger and a kinky fairy tale with a happily-ever-after ending."
Review:
Romantic, edutaining (educating and entertaining), nuanced and hard to set down, Dark is an excellent novel that has characters that are not only interesting but matter (beyond the cuffs and the floggings), whose emotional journeys will likely haunt this reader.
Alison Tyler is one of the best working erotica writers today. Check out - buy - her work wherever you may see it, so that you might not only be entertained but learn from it (whether it be for her writing style or her characters' intriguing carnality).
Followed by The Delicious Torment: A Story of Submission.
(pb; 2012: erotica / zombie anthology. Foreword by Thomas Roche)
From the back cover:
"Why should the zombie apocalypse be the time to think about romance? Like flesh for zombies, romance is the stuff of life for the living. We shamble through life searching desperately for it, and nothing but love fills our need.
"In the pages of Hungry for Love, people find each other and love each other in a world of contagion, consumption and consumerism gone mad.
"Coming Together is about giving. . . and about sex (a powerful combination in any venue). Each book in the series benefits a different charity. Join us in doing good while being bad, and celebrate the diversity of life!"
Overall review:
Marsden has fashioned a solid, diverse collection of zombies-and-sex tales.
A few of the stories didn't grab me - two ran too long (Kiki Howell's "Zombie Factory" and t'Sade's "Love Never Dies") and one of the stories (Erzabet Bishop's "Dark Hunger") was too predictable.
Even these flawed pieces had something to recommend them, as rough-write works - they merely needed to be whittled down slightly, or the author could have thrown an unfamiliar mini-twist into her shambling lust mix, to help distinguish it from other seen-this-before stories.
Hungry for Love is worth owning - for its charitable aims, and its published delivery.
Standout stories:
1.) "My Name is Brighton" - Alana Noël Voth: A date rape victim-turned-zombie seeks out one of the men (Paul) who used her - without being aware that he had done so.
More horror story than plot-lite sex work, this excellent, sympathetic and character-veracious tale is one of the best stories in this anthology.
2.) "Meat" - Bobby Diabolus: A bite-infected man goes through various stages of evolving desire, while looking for his raw, sexy ex-lover (Honey).
"Meat" is an interesting story that ably balances the emotional and carnal aspects of its lead character, without tipping into unintentional pornoriffic parody, emotive abstraction or zombie clichés.
This original, first person-POV tale vaguely echoes David Cronenberg's "Venereal Horror" films (e.g., Rabid, 1977; The Brood, 1979; Videodrome, 1983; The Fly, 1986 remake; eXistenZ, 1999).
3.) "Annie Morgan" - Armand Rosamilia: Especially good piece about a mercurial, promiscuous woman confronting something more potent than undead attackers.
4.) "Queer Zombie Disco" - Kirsty Logan: Offbeat tune-based horror sex tale.
5.) "Screen Siren" - Annabeth Leong: Hollywood-skewering, imaginative piece about a Z-grade movie director (Sam) and an undead, sentient actress.
This is one of the best entries in this collection.
Other stories:
"You Make a Dead Man Come" - Sommer Marsden; "Last Man on Earth" - Blacksilk; "The Tenderest Meat" - Elise Hepner; "Zombie Goddess" - Sadey Quinn; "Zombie Apocalypse: First Responder" - Kissa Starling; "Head Full of Zombie" - Alison Tyler; "Dead in the Water"- Lynn Townsend; "Little Deaths" - Cora Zane; "You Look Better Dead" - Jeffrey L. Shipley
