The Vampire Sextette

Rating:
Summary: These six vampire novellas are quite anemic
Review: In his introduction to this collection of six original erotic vampire novellas, editor Marvin Kaye insists that he has included stories of "the traditional bloodsucking variety." If that is his intent, I have to say he failed rather miserably. You will find no vampires in this collection that resemble the traditional image of the breed. In a couple of cases, vampirism seems to be an after-thought having no real connection to the story being told. There is a fair share of eroticism in these pages, but as often as not it strikes me as gratuitous and thus ineffective.

Kim Newman's The Other Side of Midnight is, frankly, a mess. There is hardly any plot at all to it. Genevieve is an elder vampire going on six hundred years old, currently working as a private detective in California. Someone is obsessed with remaking Dracula movies, including the great Orson Welles. Welles hires Gene to find out about the man financing his project, a horrible remake of the Dracula story that was supposed to be Welles' big comeback movie. In the midst of a plethora of Hollywood name-dropping, we also have Barbie the Vampire Slayer who is following the designs of the Overlooker (who happens to be a high school librarian). Somehow all of these people are related, but the whole story is a ridiculous farce subsisting solely on nonsense.

Nancy Collins' Some Velvet Morning features Sonja Blue, the vampire/vampire slayer who has walked the pages of much of the author's fiction. Sporting a black leather motorcycle jacket and mirrored sunglasses, she is the Blue Monster who badly wounded the Contessa years earlier and is determined to finish her off once and for all. The Contessa is not a typical vampire; rather, she is a strega, one who has transformed herself into an Undead creature through black magic. Rather than drink the blood of her victims, she washes in their blood in order to retain your youth and vitality. She has her own private renfield named Phaedra who seduces men and brings them home to supply her mistress' needs. I really enjoyed this story once I got past the overtly sexual descriptions early on. Although Sonja is not heavily featured in the story as a whole-it is really the Contessa's story-she comes across as a most unusual "hero." We know she is a vampire, and we know her transformation was not a wanted one, but we are given few clues about her history and motivations.

The prolific Brian Stableford contributes the tale "Sheena" about a young Goth rock singer/songwriter. The protagonist Tony Weever meets Sheena at work and becomes intrigued with her slight, deeply mysterious presence. Sheena introduces Tony to a Gothic-dominated world built on memories of past lives, weaving a spell of sorts over him that leads him to thirst for the type of life in which the two of them can be truly together. The story reads pretty well throughout but peters out into a slightly esoteric conclusion involving uncommon shades of vampirism.

S. P. Somtow's Vanilla Blood is just puerile nonsense, pornography disguised as vampiric fiction. It consists almost exclusively of the transcript of a ridiculous murder case. A young man killed his family and went on a murder spree, and the trial details the events leading up to his crime. The witnesses are teenagers who describe disgusting vampiric activities in graphic terms that would never be permitted in any courthouse in the country, much of which has little to do with the facts of the purported murder case. This courtroom farce is inane and not at all worth reading.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's In the Face of Death seems to have a lot of potential early on but slowly fizzles as the story progresses. This is basically a tale of an affair between William T. Sherman's and a high-society vampire in 1855. My intense dislike of Sherman admittedly affected my capacity for embracing the story; I had no desire to picture the man naked and engaging in passions of the flesh, I can assure you. To the story's detriment, it never rises above the prurient level of Sherman's adulterous liaisons with Madelaine, a youthful vampire already well over a century old. Sherman comes off as a weak, pathetic fool unable to control his passion for Madelaine despite his responsibilities to a wife and children of his own. As far as the vampirism aspect of the tale is concerned, it is quite remote. We hear of Madelaine's chests of native soil and her lining of her shoes with it so as to walk in the light of day, and that's about it. The only moments involving lips and necks coming together involve kissing and nothing more. I just don't think there is much to this particular story; the inclusion of a famous man of history in its pages serves no other purpose than to make the work stand out among other genre pieces. I would not even call this horror; it is basically a romance.

The concluding piece is the unusual vampire tale The Isle is Full of Noises by Tanith Lee. It does live up to its billing as a vampire story unlike any I've read before, but the story didn't work for me at all. Lee intimately links a vampire with a piano, and no amount of literary preening makes the connection an effective one. The story also contains a story within a story, sometimes making things confusing. The premise sounds good; the protagonist works out her frustrations of an unrequited love by writing the man into her works of fiction, punishing him in the only fashion she knows how. Quickly, though, the story gets bogged down in two competing storylines (one of them a story within a story) of converging vampiric pianos. The whole thing is just too murky to be effective.

Rating:
Summary: These six vampire novellas are quite anemic
Review: In his introduction to this collection of six original erotic vampire novellas, editor Marvin Kaye insists that he has included stories of "the traditional bloodsucking variety." If that is his intent, I have to say he failed rather miserably. You will find no vampires in this collection that resemble the traditional image of the breed. In a couple of cases, vampirism seems to be an after-thought having no real connection to the story being told. There is a fair share of eroticism in these pages, but as often as not it strikes me as gratuitous and thus ineffective.

Kim Newman's The Other Side of Midnight is, frankly, a mess. There is hardly any plot at all to it. Genevieve is an elder vampire going on six hundred years old, currently working as a private detective in California. Someone is obsessed with remaking Dracula movies, including the great Orson Welles. Welles hires Gene to find out about the man financing his project, a horrible remake of the Dracula story that was supposed to be Welles' big comeback movie. In the midst of a plethora of Hollywood name-dropping, we also have Barbie the Vampire Slayer who is following the designs of the Overlooker (who happens to be a high school librarian). Somehow all of these people are related, but the whole story is a ridiculous farce subsisting solely on nonsense.

Nancy Collins' Some Velvet Morning features Sonja Blue, the vampire/vampire slayer who has walked the pages of much of the author's fiction. Sporting a black leather motorcycle jacket and mirrored sunglasses, she is the Blue Monster who badly wounded the Contessa years earlier and is determined to finish her off once and for all. The Contessa is not a typical vampire; rather, she is a strega, one who has transformed herself into an Undead creature through black magic. Rather than drink the blood of her victims, she washes in their blood in order to retain your youth and vitality. She has her own private renfield named Phaedra who seduces men and brings them home to supply her mistress' needs. I really enjoyed this story once I got past the overtly sexual descriptions early on. Although Sonja is not heavily featured in the story as a whole-it is really the Contessa's story-she comes across as a most unusual "hero." We know she is a vampire, and we know her transformation was not a wanted one, but we are given few clues about her history and motivations.

The prolific Brian Stableford contributes the tale "Sheena" about a young Goth rock singer/songwriter. The protagonist Tony Weever meets Sheena at work and becomes intrigued with her slight, deeply mysterious presence. Sheena introduces Tony to a Gothic-dominated world built on memories of past lives, weaving a spell of sorts over him that leads him to thirst for the type of life in which the two of them can be truly together. The story reads pretty well throughout but peters out into a slightly esoteric conclusion involving uncommon shades of vampirism.

S. P. Somtow's Vanilla Blood is just puerile nonsense, pornography disguised as vampiric fiction. It consists almost exclusively of the transcript of a ridiculous murder case. A young man killed his family and went on a murder spree, and the trial details the events leading up to his crime. The witnesses are teenagers who describe disgusting vampiric activities in graphic terms that would never be permitted in any courthouse in the country, much of which has little to do with the facts of the purported murder case. This courtroom farce is inane and not at all worth reading.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's In the Face of Death seems to have a lot of potential early on but slowly fizzles as the story progresses. This is basically a tale of an affair between William T. Sherman's and a high-society vampire in 1855. My intense dislike of Sherman admittedly affected my capacity for embracing the story; I had no desire to picture the man naked and engaging in passions of the flesh, I can assure you. To the story's detriment, it never rises above the prurient level of Sherman's adulterous liaisons with Madelaine, a youthful vampire already well over a century old. Sherman comes off as a weak, pathetic fool unable to control his passion for Madelaine despite his responsibilities to a wife and children of his own. As far as the vampirism aspect of the tale is concerned, it is quite remote. We hear of Madelaine's chests of native soil and her lining of her shoes with it so as to walk in the light of day, and that's about it. The only moments involving lips and necks coming together involve kissing and nothing more. I just don't think there is much to this particular story; the inclusion of a famous man of history in its pages serves no other purpose than to make the work stand out among other genre pieces. I would not even call this horror; it is basically a romance.

The concluding piece is the unusual vampire tale The Isle is Full of Noises by Tanith Lee. It does live up to its billing as a vampire story unlike any I've read before, but the story didn't work for me at all. Lee intimately links a vampire with a piano, and no amount of literary preening makes the connection an effective one. The story also contains a story within a story, sometimes making things confusing. The premise sounds good; the protagonist works out her frustrations of an unrequited love by writing the man into her works of fiction, punishing him in the only fashion she knows how. Quickly, though, the story gets bogged down in two competing storylines (one of them a story within a story) of converging vampiric pianos. The whole thing is just too murky to be effective.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag of vampiric treats.
Review: The first story, The Other Side of Midnight by Kim Newman, gets off to a slow start and never fully recovers. It is a mishmash of several elements but is basically the tale of a Genevieve, an ancient female vampire, who spends her time as a private investigator in Hollywood. She runs into Orson Welles who, in this alternate universe, is working on filming his version of Dracula. Orson hires her to check out the mysterious man financing the film. During the investigation she gets an inside look at the making of vampire porn (nothing too explicit though, darn it!) and meets up with the hilarious Barbie and her Overlooker (if you are a fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer you will want to read the story for these priceless moments alone). There are many descriptive passages about the filming process which might have interested me if I were remotely interested in Orson Welles or in the process of making a film but sadly it was all wasted on me. Though it had its moments this 88 page story seemed much longer to me and I admit to skimming in order to get Barbie's next appearance.

Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Collins was more to my liking. This story features a witch with a rather icky beauty secret. In order to rejuvenate her youthful good looks she must bathe in fresh human blood. Her victims are horny (and nearly always married) males easily tempted with a promise of sex made by a beautiful woman. In my opinion this type of guy deserves everything he gets so the comeuppance, though gory, was quite entertaining for me. Vampire Sonja Blue, Nancy Collins famous vampire-slayer, is hot on the trail of the blood witch because she, unlike myself, does not believe the witch should be allowed to continue her public service work. Though this story slightly disappointed me near its end it was fast-paced, violent and an enjoyable little read if you are in the mood for nastiness.

Sheena by Brian Stableford was my favorite of all of the stories. Tony Weever is your typical young customer service-drone spending his working hours placating angry customers while surrounded by a group of venomous young female co-workers whom he does his best to avoid. Sheena is the exception. She is a loner and is rumored to be a goth who is too weird to date. Tony is intrigued and begins a tentative friendship with Sheena that slowly turns into love. Tony will do anything to please Sheena and initially feigns interest in her darker lifestyle but quickly becomes entranced in her world of music, past lives and vampirism. This is a lovely but bittersweet story of love and loss that sways towards the melancholy but remains hopeful all at the same time. It also beautifully combines the threads of music and sensuality while painting a unique picture of vampirism.

Vanilla Blood by S.M. Somtow begins smack dab in the middle of a sensational court case involving the bizarre killing spree of one young man. It is a pretty blatant spoof of the over-the-top cases that were recent at the time the story was written (OJ and the like) and it is pretty darn funny in an extremely morbid and often juvenile, sex-obsessed sort of way. The story is written from the point of view of several key witnesses. My favorite was the sex obsessed best friend of the murder suspect who tends to go off on sexual tangents while telling the story that led up to the murders. This may not be the best written story I have ever read (for instance, two of the teenage witnesses are written in the same exact "voice" and I couldn't distinguish one from the other) but it has lots of sex, lots of blood and, most importantly, it made me laugh several times.

My least favorite of this collection is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's dull entry titled In The Face of Death. The story chronicles the days Madelaine de Montalia, the so-called vampire of the piece, spends in the arms of her married human lover William Sherman. Initially, the two fight their bizarre attraction to each other (bizarre to me because there is nothing particularly attractive about either of these people) but of course they succumb to the temptation. The remainder of the story consists of scattered kisses, romps and slight feelings of guilt. Interspersed within the story are Madelaine's journal entries which only cement the fact that she is one of the most mind-numbingly boring vampires I have ever come across. She writes in excruciating detail about such interesting subjects as house hunting and financial matters. Worse, even, is the fact that there is no blood letting, no sexual tension, no violence, absolutely zero character development and darn it, there is not even a good old fashioned brood going on here! This story may as well of been about two regular unlikable dullards ~ there is no need at all for the vampiric angle. As much as I love an old fashioned love story, this one was so uninteresting what with its tedious plot and flat characters that I could barely get through it without skimming. Sadly, the only thing going for it was its short length.

Finishing up the sextette is Tanith Lee's odd, atmospheric tale called The Isle Is Full of Noises about an author obsessed by a man who has ignored her for decades. She gets her revenge by writing him into all of her books. His fictional character suffers hardships and usually comes to a painful and untimely end. Yse's current vampiric novel becomes a big part of The Isle Is Full of Noises and is interesting, if a bit slow moving. Somewhere along the line Yse's fantasy and reality begin to merge and I found the end result quite puzzling and a little vague and, as a result, this story was not one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag of vampiric treats.
Review: The first story, The Other Side of Midnight by Kim Newman, gets off to a slow start and never fully recovers. It is a mishmash of several elements but is basically the tale of a Genevieve, an ancient female vampire, who spends her time as a private investigator in Hollywood. She runs into Orson Welles who, in this alternate universe, is working on filming his version of Dracula. Orson hires her to check out the mysterious man financing the film. During the investigation she gets an inside look at the making of vampire porn (nothing too explicit though, darn it!) and meets up with the hilarious Barbie and her Overlooker (if you are a fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer you will want to read the story for these priceless moments alone). There are many descriptive passages about the filming process which might have interested me if I were remotely interested in Orson Welles or in the process of making a film but sadly it was all wasted on me. Though it had its moments this 88 page story seemed much longer to me and I admit to skimming in order to get Barbie's next appearance.

Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Collins was more to my liking. This story features a witch with a rather icky beauty secret. In order to rejuvenate her youthful good looks she must bathe in fresh human blood. Her victims are horny (and nearly always married) males easily tempted with a promise of sex made by a beautiful woman. In my opinion this type of guy deserves everything he gets so the comeuppance, though gory, was quite entertaining for me. Vampire Sonja Blue, Nancy Collins famous vampire-slayer, is hot on the trail of the blood witch because she, unlike myself, does not believe the witch should be allowed to continue her public service work. Though this story slightly disappointed me near its end it was fast-paced, violent and an enjoyable little read if you are in the mood for nastiness.

Sheena by Brian Stableford was my favorite of all of the stories. Tony Weever is your typical young customer service-drone spending his working hours placating angry customers while surrounded by a group of venomous young female co-workers whom he does his best to avoid. Sheena is the exception. She is a loner and is rumored to be a goth who is too weird to date. Tony is intrigued and begins a tentative friendship with Sheena that slowly turns into love. Tony will do anything to please Sheena and initially feigns interest in her darker lifestyle but quickly becomes entranced in her world of music, past lives and vampirism. This is a lovely but bittersweet story of love and loss that sways towards the melancholy but remains hopeful all at the same time. It also beautifully combines the threads of music and sensuality while painting a unique picture of vampirism.

Vanilla Blood by S.M. Somtow begins smack dab in the middle of a sensational court case involving the bizarre killing spree of one young man. It is a pretty blatant spoof of the over-the-top cases that were recent at the time the story was written (OJ and the like) and it is pretty darn funny in an extremely morbid and often juvenile, sex-obsessed sort of way. The story is written from the point of view of several key witnesses. My favorite was the sex obsessed best friend of the murder suspect who tends to go off on sexual tangents while telling the story that led up to the murders. This may not be the best written story I have ever read (for instance, two of the teenage witnesses are written in the same exact "voice" and I couldn't distinguish one from the other) but it has lots of sex, lots of blood and, most importantly, it made me laugh several times.

My least favorite of this collection is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's dull entry titled In The Face of Death. The story chronicles the days Madelaine de Montalia, the so-called vampire of the piece, spends in the arms of her married human lover William Sherman. Initially, the two fight their bizarre attraction to each other (bizarre to me because there is nothing particularly attractive about either of these people) but of course they succumb to the temptation. The remainder of the story consists of scattered kisses, romps and slight feelings of guilt. Interspersed within the story are Madelaine's journal entries which only cement the fact that she is one of the most mind-numbingly boring vampires I have ever come across. She writes in excruciating detail about such interesting subjects as house hunting and financial matters. Worse, even, is the fact that there is no blood letting, no sexual tension, no violence, absolutely zero character development and darn it, there is not even a good old fashioned brood going on here! This story may as well of been about two regular unlikable dullards ~ there is no need at all for the vampiric angle. As much as I love an old fashioned love story, this one was so uninteresting what with its tedious plot and flat characters that I could barely get through it without skimming. Sadly, the only thing going for it was its short length.

Finishing up the sextette is Tanith Lee's odd, atmospheric tale called The Isle Is Full of Noises about an author obsessed by a man who has ignored her for decades. She gets her revenge by writing him into all of her books. His fictional character suffers hardships and usually comes to a painful and untimely end. Yse's current vampiric novel becomes a big part of The Isle Is Full of Noises and is interesting, if a bit slow moving. Somewhere along the line Yse's fantasy and reality begin to merge and I found the end result quite puzzling and a little vague and, as a result, this story was not one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: 2 Out of 3 Isn't Bad
Review: The Vampire Sextette is a book that is comprised of six stories written by six different authors. As one would expect, not every person is going to enjoy every story that is contained in this volume. I enjoyed two out of the three stories I've read from this book thus far. When I first picked this up, I was expecting something different than what I found myself reading, but I was not disappointed. If you're looking to read stories about vampires that have a different twist, then I would recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: 2 Stars is being very Generous...Where did the vamps go?
Review: Unbelieveable plots and very little vampirism in this collection of wanna-be vamp tales.
I am a huge fan of vampire stories and thought by the little monologue from the book's editor Marvin Kaye that he would deliver us some real horror and scare factor here, but all I found was contrived and boring stories that had little to do with vampires at times and some downright off the path altogether, i.e., the third tale titled 'Sheena'.
Some even read more like porno rather than horror, i.e., 'Vanilla Blood'.
The only tale that came marginally close to vampires and horror was 'Some Velvet Morning', a tale about a slayer on the trail of a witch who bathes in blood; or in other words, Elizabeth Bathory, legendary witch/vampire from 1500's England.
Six stories in all and none came close to scaring me or being 'what horror is all about' according to the promise from the editor. If this is his idea of horror and that vamps are bad guys and horrifying, than he needs to brush up on some new stories, because I can recall a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes that were more scary than this entire book.

The two star rating? Is for 'Some Velvet Morning', the only tale I would consider worth the read and that's being generous... do yourself a favor, skip this one.

Tracy Talley~@